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PEARLS OF 
GREAT PRICE 

by 

Thomas A. King 

Minister oj the New Jerusalem Church 
Lake wood, Ohio 




THE NUNC LICET PRESS 

920 Nicollet Avenue 
Minneapolis, Minn. 

1918 



ii'iiiHiniiimHiiiinuiiiHHiimiiniimiiiiiiiimijnin 




Copyright 1918 by 
The Nunc Licet Press 



OCT ! I (918 

©DU5038ff9 



INTRODUCTION 



The Bible is more than a record of outward 
events. It is the Word of God, and as such, is 
inspired by Him. The writers of the Bible were not 
left to themselves in the expression of divine ideas 
entering their minds by influx, but, instead, the very 
words of the letter of Scripture were dictated to 
them by the Lord. This divine dictation and 
thence inspiration did not involve, in every in- 
stance, literal accuracy. St. Paul tells us that all 
Scripture given by inspiration of God is profitable 
for doctrine, reproof, and instruction that the man 
of God may be thoroughly furnished unto every 
good word and work. Our English word inspiration 
is derived from a Latin word meaning, to breathe 
into. The whole body of the literal sense of the 
Bible was breathed into by the Lord, and thus 
inspired. 

This thought of the Scriptures lifts them to a 
higher plane than that which they occupy in the 
thought of the older theologies, for it involves the 
concept of a spiritual sense in the Bible, which in 
itself constitutes an organic spiritual soul, which 
dwells in every part of the literal sense as in its own 
body. 

This spiritual sense of the Scriptures treats, 
primarily of the Lord, His coming into the world, 
the Glorification of His Humanity, and His presence 
with man in His divine Humanity, and secondarily 

3 



of the reformation and regeneration of the human 
soul. The literal sense presents a series of divinely 
selected pictures of these two processes — the Glori- 
fication of the Lord and the Regeneration of Man. 
This is true of every inspired book of the Old and 
New Testaments. The life of our Lord as recorded 
in the four Gospels, while actual and real, was the 
revelation, in symbols, of His life as He now lives it 
over again in the regeneration of those who believe 
in and follow Him. - 

The purpose of this volume is to furnish illustra- 
tions of these great truths. The chapters composing 
it were written from week to week as explana- 
tions of the spiritual sense of the International 
Sunday School Lessons covering the period from 
October, 1917, to October, 1918. The explana- 
tions are in no sense critical. It was the author's 
aim to unfold in a simple and direct way the 
spiritual sense of the leading features of each lesson 
in its application to the work of personal regenera- 
tion. 

It is the sincere hope of the author that the spirit- 
ual meaning of the Lord's sayings and doings, as it 
has been unfolded in these chapters, may prove of 
spiritual value and help to all into whose hands this 
little volume may fall, and stimulate in them a 
spiritual desire to realize the Lord's life of service in 
their own lives, 

Thomas A. King. 

Lakewood, Ohio, 
October, 1918. 

4 



CONTENTS 



Chapter Page 

I. The Captivity 7 

II. The Temple Rebuilt and Dedicated 15 

III. Ezra Returns from Babylon 23 

IV. Defeat Through Drunkenness 31 

V. Nehemiah's Prayer 39 

VI. Nehemiah's Prayer Answered 47 

VII. The Psalm of Thanksgiving. . 55 

VIII. Nehemiah Rebuilds the Walls of Jerusalem. 63 

IX. Ezra and Nehemiah Teach the Law 71 

X. Nehemiah Enforces the Law of the Sabbath. 79 

XL The Advent of the Messiah 88 

XII. John Prepares the Way for Jesus 96 

XIII. Jesus Begins His Work 105 

XIV. Jesus At Work 113 

XV. Jesus Forgiving Sin 121 

XVI. Jesus Lord of the Sabbath 130 

XVII. Jesus Chooses the Twelve 139 

XVIII. Jesus Teaching by Parables 147 

XIX. Jesus Teaching by Parables — The Growth of 

the Kingdom 158 

XX. Jesus Bringing Peace 167 

XXI. Jesus Restores Life and Health 176 

XXII. Jesus Sending Forth the Twelve . 185 

XXIII. Jesus Ministering to the Multitude 193 

XXIV. The Easter Lesson 202 

XXV. Jesus Sets Men Free fc 212 

XXVI. Jesus Requires Confession and Loyalty 221 

XXVII. Jesus Transfigured 230 

5 



Chapter Page 

XXVIII. Jesus Rebuking Selfishness 239 

XXIX. Jesus Sets New Standards of Life 248 

XXX. Jesus Faces the Cross 257 

XXXI. Jesus Exercising Kingly Authority 265 

XXXII. Jesus Silences His Adversaries 274 

XXXIII. Jesus Warns and Comforts His Friends 283 

XXXIV. Jesus Faces Betrayal and Denial 292 

XXXV. Jesus on the Cross 300 

XXXVI. Jesus Triumphant Over Death 309 

XXXVII. Jesus Christ Our Redeemer and Lord 317 

XXXVIII. Jesus Christ Our Redeemer and Lord 323 

XXXIX. The Christian Life 330 

XL. Praying and Obeying God 339 

XLI. Growing Stronger and Helping Others 348 

XLII. Working in the Church — Speaking for Christ 356 

XLI1I. Christian Giving — Conquering Evil 365 

XLIV. Winning the World for Christ — Fruits of the 
Christian Life and What It Means to Be a 
Christian. . 373 

I 



G 



I 

RETURNING FROM CAPTIVITY. 
Ezra i. 1-11. 



THE CAPTIVITY. 

The Bible story of the captivity — or the enslave- 
ment of the Jews in Babylon, is real history, but as 
record-eel in the Lord's Word, the story contains 
something more than mere history. Historical 
accuracy in the Bible does not of itself constitute 
divine inspiration. The Christian faith calls for a 
deeper meaning in the Bible history than the mere 
record of outward events in the lives of the Jewish 
people. The historical portions of the Lord's Word 
are inspired because God used them as the outward 
form of the deeper history of the spiritual life of His 
cliurch as a corporate body, and also of the inner 
liie of His child. 

This concept of the Bible history does not, in the 
least, detract from its literal significance. It simply 
defines the place of outward history in the Bible, 
wiile at the same time, it shows the Christian the 
divine content of the history, lifting it out of all that 
is merely racial and local into the region of the un- 
limited and universal. It exalts and glorifies the 



8 



Pearls of Great Price 



Bible history. It reveals the divine purpose in it and 
enables the Christian to enter within the veil of the 
letter and behold the bright vision of spiritual truth 
that is hidden from the worldly wise and prudent. 

Thus it is that the story of the carrying away of 
the Jews into Babylon is the correspondential form 
in which is told the sadder story of the captivity (1) 
of the church — how it was carried away into a spirit- 
ual Babylon, and (2) how each human life is carried 
away into spiritual captivity. 

(1) As to the church: We all know how simple 
and beautiful the life of the early Christian church 
was. It is true that the early church did not possess 
the rational and scientific doctrines that are now the 
possession of the church; for the rational and scien- 
tific age had not dawned, but it did believe, in its 
own simple way, the divine fact of the Word made 
flesh in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and it 
worshipped Him knowing that the Father was in 
Him and the Holy Spirit from Him. It was in the 
lovely life of charity, and great was its inward peac^. 
A new life had come in and through the Incarnaje 
Word; and the early church lived in it. Its mem- 
bers loved the risen and glorified Lord, and frojn 
His love given to them, loved one another. Hop 
beautiful all this was! How free it was from self arjd 
its lust for dominion and power! 

But this state did not continue. The age of con- 
troversy came. Doctrinal disputes and dissensions 



Pearls of Great Price 



9 



arose. The love of self developed. The love of 
ruling over men's souls awakened in the heart of the 
leaders and priests of the church. The church was 
carried away into a spiritual captivity to the love 
of self, and the love of ruling over God's heritage. 
The Bishop of Rome became the visible head of the 
church and claimed divine powers. Peace was 
taken from the church. Its freedom was lost, and 
Romanism with its claims, lust for spiritual domin- 
ion and dominance over human souls, was the 
Babylon into which the church was carried and in 
which it is now, to a large extent, living in captivity. 
This is the internal historical sense of the captivity 
in Babylon. 

(-2) But all this is true of the individual. Each 
one of us goes into captivity. The innocent babe 
nestling in the mother's arms, has in potency, a 
spiritual mind, which is created on a level with 
heaven; and this mind, during infancy, childhood 
and youth, is open to heaven and plastic to the 
touch of the angels. During this period, the heavenly 
guardians, full of the Lord's love, minister to this 
spiritual mind by implanting remains of goodness in 
it and imbuing it with soft, gentle and tender states. 
This is the heavenly side of childlife — the sinless 
part of man. 

But below this lovely region of the soul, there is in 
every child a mind which is created on a level with 
the world and ministered to and stored with the 



10 



Pearls of Great Price 



things that are of this world. Here, in this mind, as 
a matter of heredity, resides the love of self and the 
world; for so far as this lower or natural mind is 
concerned, every child is born in evils. But evils 
are not sins. The evil nature of the natural mind in 
the child is from parents and even remote ancestors. 
And the child is born with these evil tendencies, and 
later on in life, they wake up. Self love begins to stir 
and assert its dominance; and one and all are car- 
ried away into captivity to self and its love of power 
and rule. And so the time comes when one feels that 
he is in a state of spiritual captivity. He apparently 
loses the things of innocent life. The lower and 
baser sides of life rules and one is in Babylon, a 
miserable captive to the unheavenly things of one's 
lower self. He is carried away captive. 

This is the individual spiritual meaning of the 
Captivity. 

RETURNING FROM CAPTIVITY. 

The return from captivity is the picture the Lori 
gives us in His Word of the deliverance of thje 
church from the evils of life and falsity of doctrin^ 
which held it in captivity, of the church's return t3 
the love and worship of the one God in the person qf 
the Glorified Christ. 

The return of the Jews to their own land, loved 
lulls and holy city and the rebuilding of the Lords 
house — how clearly, in the spiritual meaning of it, 



Pearls of Great Price 



11 



we see the fulfilment of the divine saying: "Behold 
I make all things new." Our church writings teach 
us that Cyrus, while a real historical character, 
represented the Lord in His Divine Humanity. In 
this thought, "the first year of Cyrus King of 
Persia" stands for the new state of the church 
inaugurated by the revelation of the Divine 
Humanity, the visible God in whom is the invisible 
and the calling out of the remnant among whom the 
Lord forms a New Church represented by the build- 
ing of a House to Him in Jerusalem. 

The great Protestant Reformation of the six- 
teenth century, while a spiritual movement of vast 
significance in that it gave the Lord's Word to the 
people in their own vernacular was nevertheless not 
the inauguration of a New Church, but only a 
preparation for so glorious an event. Something- 
more was needed. The Bible must not only be 
restored but there must be an opening of its divine 
content and the revelation from it of a divine 
doctrine for the building of a real and true House 
to the Lord. 

Here we come to the New Dispensation of the 
church; for the fulfilment of the prophecy of the 
Lord's spiritual Advent, in the opening of the 
internal sense of His Word and the revelation of 
genuine Christian doctrine and the establishment 
of the church anew among men, in which they will 
cone into freedom of thinking rationally and into 



12 



Pearls of Great Price 



a larger life, is what the church in heaven sees in the 
story of the Jews' return from captivity. 

These glorious things are happening in our day 
and in our midst. The Return is being made. The 
Lord's House is being built. A New Church is here. 
It is now spiritually the "first year of Cyrus King of 
Persia." 

The story of the people helping by their gifts to 
build the Lord's House in Jerusalem is only the out- 
ward form of the deeper story of how, today, amid 
the fall of dogmas and the crash of creeds, the Lord's 
children all over the world are turning their hearts 
to the Divine Human Saviour and their eyes to the 
Holy City coming down out of heaven from God. 
They freely give of their gold and silver — freely 
return to God the goodness and truth that are His 
by acknowledging Him as the divine source of both. 
And thus each good man and woman is helping in 
his or her way to build this House for the Lord. Nit 
only this, but as Cyrus brought forth the vessels pf 
the House of the Lord which Nebuchadnezzar hid 
brought forth out of Jerusalem and put in the house 
of his gods, so the Lord is today restoring to His n^w 
House the holy things of His service which hal r e 
been profaned by evils of life and falsity of doctrine. 
He brings them forth and restores them. He gi\es 
the rational meaning of them and thus places them 
anew in His crowning church. Everything that the 
old has wrongly used, the Lord restores to lis 



Pearls of Great Price 



13 



church. And His people return to Him in true 
worship and service. They are returning every- 
where to the new Christian church with its three 
essentials — the Divinity of the Lord, the Holiness 
of the Word, and the Life of Charity. 

We can all help in this great world movement, 
each in his own way. And when the Lord's House 
is built we shall have a new world — a new freedom 
and a new life. God will hasten it in His time. 

THE INDIVIDUAL RETURN. 

What is true of the church is, at the same time, 
true of the individual. And so the story of the 
Return from captivity in Babylon is, spiritually 
understood, the story of the human souPs return to 
the Lord from the captivity in which it has been 
held by the natural mind and its evil loves. The 
Lord never loses the vision of His image in His 
child. The good things of every one's childlife 
remain with him and although he may wander away 
from his Heavenly Father, yet the Lord follows him 
ia his wanderings and enslavement, and when the 
rght time comes He brings him home. Of course He 
does not violate one's freedom. He cannot do that 
without unmaking man; but He ever seeks to lead 
Lis captive child back to His heart. He does this 
through the things that are His own in man. He 
avakens the better side of one's life; and then it is 



14 



Pearls of Great Price 



a matter of repentance, reformation and regenera- 
tion. 

And all who heed this call and turn to the Lord 
will find His arms open to receive them. And then 
the house building begins; for each one's mind must 
have built in it a dwelling place for the Lord. This 
is an individual work. It must be done in the 
spiritual Jerusalem — done in and by the doctrine of 
the church which is drawn from the Lord's Word. 
Such are the lessons of the story. How they all 
touch life and guide it in the way everlasting! 



It is to be known that the Church becomes Baby- 
lonia when charity and faith cease, and in their 
place the love of self begins to reign. B} r Babylon 
are meant all who want to domineer through 
religion. — Last Judgment, 



II 

THE TEMPLE REBUILT AND DEDICATED. 
Ezra hi. 8-13. 



The supreme work that was to be done upon the 
return of the captives from Babylon was the re- 
building of the Temple and the establishment of the 
Jewish ritual and worship; for the Temple service 
was the central thing in the religious and national 
life of the Israelitish people. 

The lesson for today brings vividly before us the 
rejoicing of the people over the rebuilding of the 
Lord's House and the joy of the people as they 
entered once more upon the holy acts of their di- 
vinely ordained worship. The whole literal account 
i?* beautiful and inspiring; and it is not difficult to 
imagine the joyousness of it all. But the fact of the 
rebuilding and dedication of the Temple as recorded 
in the book of Ezra, is a thing of the past. It is on 
its mere historic side, a thing of long ago; and while 
interesting and inspiring as an historical relation, 
yet if that were all there is in the record, it would 
be difficult to find in it lessons helpful to the man of 
the church today who lives amid conditions and 
faces problems so far away and different from the 

15 



16 Pearls of Great Price 



age and conditions which furnish the setting of this 
story. 

It was an apostle who wrote: 'The letter killeth, 
but the spirit maketh alive." The Christian church 
in both its Dispensations, that of the Lord's first 
Advent and that of His second Advent, was in- 
volved in the story of the Temple and the holy 
ritual of the Jewish church. 

THE REPRESENTATIVE OF A CHURCH. 

The Jewish church or Dispensation was repre- 
sentative of the Christian church. In the repre- 
sentative of a church, such as the Jewish church 
was, the Lord and heaven have connection with it by 
means of the correspondences and significatives of 
its outward worship. 

Thus the Jewish church was a thing entirely out- 
ward. It was a church among the people. The church 
in heaven was connected with it as a thing that sig- 
nified or corresponded to spiritual qualities and 
realities. The angels saw what was within all the 
forms of the Jewish worship; and the holy states 
thus awakened in them opened channels through 
which the Lord could and did establish points 6f 
contact with man in the natural world and provide 
a medium of salvation which served the divine 
purpose until the fulness of time came for His 
coming into the w T orld and the establishment of the 
Christian church. 



Pearls of Great Price 17 



Here, then, lies the whole significance of the 
Jewish representative of a church. It was a prop — 
a stay, to the angelic heavens. It held them up and 
kept open a channel of communication between the 
Lord and man. 

THE REBUILDING OF THE TEMPLE. 

The Lord provides that when one dispensation^ 
the church closes another shall be given and thus a 
New church founded, through' which He may be 
able to bestow the things of eternal life upon men. 

Thus when the Jewish church could no longer 
serve the divine purpose, it came to its end. It was 
consummated. This took place when the Lord 
came into the world. He judged and removed it. 
The rebuilding of the Temple is the picture He gives 
us of the rising up of the church that was built upon 
Him — the Christian church, which would be a rep- 
resentative church. For in a representative church, 
heaven has connection, not with mere outward 
ceremony and ritual, but with the inward quality of 
spiritual life formed in its members. 

The Christian church was not a thing merely 
among men, but a new life in them. It was the 
Temple rebuilt, with a new significance attaching 
to every phase of worship and life. It was a repre- 
sentative church, the very substance of which the 
Jewish church was the shadow. 

The apostolic period of the Christian church wa^s 



18 Pearls of Great Price 



its golden age. It was not concerned about out- 
ward things of mere theology. It "builded the altar 
of the God of Israel to offer burnt offerings thereon." 
The worship of the one God in the Divine Manhood 
of Christ was the altar it built. And this worship was 
not formal. It was of the heart. The Lord was real 
to the early Christians. He was not an ecclesiasti- 
cal Christ. He was God in the flesh — God revealed 
to their hearts in the Divine Humanity. 

The love of Him filled the heart of the church. 
Every offering made to Him came from the heart 
and was warm from the love of serving the Lord and 
one another. How beautiful was the life of the 
early church! All the states of its life were of love. 
Evening and morning — states of shade and states of 
light — were of love. They fulfilled the meaning of 
what we are told in this lesson : "They offered burnt 
offerings morning and evening." 

What we are told of the returned captives keep- 
ing again the Feast of Tabernacles and establishing 
the daily burnt offerings and the continual burnt 
offerings, both of the new moons and of all the set 
feasts of the Lord and the free will offerings unto tie 
Lord — all these things found spiritual fulfilment In 
the life of the early Christian church. The outwaid 
form passed away, but the spiritual qualities of life 
for which they stood was unfolded, and the new^ 
Temple of a real spiritual church and a real internal 
worship of the Lore! ^as built. 



Peakls of Great Price 19 



The new Temple was' spiritual. It was the 
church of the Word made flesh — a house of God 
made not with hands. The outlying world soon 
felt the power of this church. It was set on a hill; 
and the life it stood for soon drew to it the Gentile 
world. Paganism, thrones and dominions went 
down before the triumphant march of its truth. It 
created a new world and a new form of life for man. 
How sad to think of the dreadful thing that came to 
destroy this Temple of the Lord! But the dreadful 
thing happened. The Lord foretold and the church 
realized it. As the church grew in power and in- 
fluence, soon there was a waning of its spiritual life; 
and then the effort was made to substitute outward 
pomp and show for spirituality of faith and life. 
Gradually the church receded from its simple life 
and doctrine. A tripersonal trinity was foisted 
upon it and the true vision of the risen and glorified 
Lord was lost. A great decline came. The church 
began a world-power, but in doing so it lost its true 
character and became a mere ecclesiasticism, and 
could no longer serve as the channel of spiritual life 
to men. The Temple lay in ruins with not one 
stone left upon another. Its apostolic doctrines 
and its beautiful life were clean gone. The end 
came. "Darkness covered the earth and gross 
darkness the people.' ' The Lord then called out 
His captive remnant. They returned. A new 
Temple was built and dedicated, 



20 Pearls of Great Price 



What do we mean? We mean that when the first 
dispensation of the Christian church closed, when 
there was no longer the worship of the one true God 
in Jesus Christ, the Lord opened the spiritual sense 
of His Divine Word and from it revealed the deeper 
things of His wisdom and established the church of 
His Second Coming. 

The story of the rebuilding of the Temple, consid- 
ered in this sense, is the story of the re-establish- 
ment — the actual restoration of the apostolic 
church. 

This is what is taking place in our day and in our 
Aery midst. The early Christian church, while it 
was formed on a plane above the Jewish church, yet 
it did not bring to itself all the depths of truth — all 
the fulness of life, that was involved in the Old 
Testament and in the ceremonials of the Jewish 
church. 

Something deeper was to come. So, when the 
end came and the world was prepared for it, a New 
church arose which was not only the restored 
apostolic church, but which opened to men a degree 
of truth and the possibility of a life transcending the 
apostolic age. 

This new age of the church restores the worship 
of the Lord Jesus Christ as the visible God in whdm 
is the invisible. This truth is the foundation stope 
of the new Temple; but His doctrine is not oilly 



restored; but it is rationally explained, Divin 



ty 



Pearls of Great Price 



21 



and Divine Humanity in one person are the Father 
and the Son in Jesus Christ; and the Hoty spirit is 
the divine operation of the Lord for the salvation of 
His children. 

This great truth of God incarnate — God revealed 
in the Divine Manhood of Christ, is what the 
Temple stands for in the highest sense. It is now 
rebuilt; and the everlasting Christian church, under 
the new Dispensation comes into a new power and 
life. It is apostolic, but goes beyond the bounds of 
the early church in that it comes with its message of 
salvation made rational, thus giving a basis of 
reason for its faith to rest upon. 

And in this Christian church rebuilt, there shall 
be realized in complete fulness all that is meant by 
the rebuilding of the altar, the offering of the daily 
sacrifice and the free will offering of the people. It 
is not a new sect, but a new concept and a new life — 
a world movement, the building of a Temple that 
shall fill the world with the glory of God. For it is 
a Temple that shall be built in each human life — a 
dwelling place for Him who said: Destroy this 
Temple and in three days I will raise it up again. 



The temple at Jerusalem was also built of whole 
stones, for by the temple of the Lord was repre- 



22 Pearls of Great Price 



sented the Lord as to Divine truth. That the 
Lord was represented by the temple He Himself 
teaches in John II. — Apocalypse Explained \ 585, 



Ill 

EZRA RETURNS FROM BABYLON. 
Ezra viii. 15-36. 



This story of Ezra's return from Babylon with all 
its incidents is literally true; but its literalness does 
not do away with the thought of it as the outward 
form of the spiritual experiences through which the 
church and the man of the church pass, Indeed, if 
we were to limit the story to the national life of the 
Jews, it would be without any special interest to us. 
The Bible is a spiritual book and its great message 
is to human souls. Outward history is only the 
natural form in which the Lord conveys His wonder- 
ful message to human souls; and when the literal 
historic veil is drawn aside, we stand face to face 
with the spiritual realities of God and the soul. 

THE GENEALOGY OF THOSE WHO RETURNED. 

If we keep clearly in mind the spirituality of the 
Lord's Word we shall see that it always treats of 
tie spiritual life. The captivity in Babylon is the 
divine symbol of the captivity of the life of the 
church — its bondage to evil especially when the love 
pi ruling over the souls of men has displaced the 
love of feeding and guiding them by the truth. This 

23 



24 



Pearls of Great Price 



being true, the return from captivity would stand 
for the church's return to its true freedom and to 
its rightful love of saving souls, and leading them 
by its revelations to heaven. 

The genealogy given in this chapter, while doubt- 
less true in the letter, has a deeper significance than 
that of a mere genealogy. Down, under its surface, 
it stands for all the various states of spiritual affec- 
tion and thought — of love and faith, in those who 
are fpund worthy to form the nucleus of a new dis- 
pensation of the church. For, as we have seen, the 
story of the return from Babylon and the rebuilding 
of the Lord's House and the re-establishing of the 
divine order of worship in Jerusalem, is, at the same 
time, the story of the raising up of the New Church 
which shall be in the worship of the Lord. 

But this remnant which returns is the remnant 
because, notwithstanding they have been in spiritual 
bondage, they have in them those spiritual qualities 
that give them an internal hold on the Lord, and a 
plane of life that makes it possible for the Lord to 
call them out of captivity and lead them back to a 
truly spiritual life. Those inward qualities of mind 
and soul — their spiritual derivation, are what is 
meant by the "genealogy of them that went up . . . 
from Babylon. " 

The genealogy has also its meaning for the in- 
dividual. The qualities of the individual soul have 
a spiritual genealogy. The Lord can lead us back 



Pearls of Great Price 



25 



to Himself and to true freedom only by means of 
the things in our minds that are His own in us. He 
can flow only into what is His own in man. And 
these good qualities are called remains. They have 
their spiritual genealogy. They are not from self, 
nor from one's parents after the flesh. They belong 
to and form one's heredity from God. They come 
from the Lord and they run back to Him. 

In our regeneration, it is these holy states that 
have been held in captivity, that are reached and 
freed. They are denoted by this genealogy. 

THE SONS OF LEVI. 

When the people were gathered together it was 
found that there were none of the sons of Levi 
among them. Ezra, therefore, sent and had them 
brought to their brethren. 

This fact, spiritually considered, is of vast sig- 
nificance. 

The Levitical priesthood -stood, not only for a 
class of men who were separated in their office from 
the other tribes of Israel, but the Levites repre- 
sented an essential element of the spiritual life — an 
element without which there can be no internal 
union with the Lord. 

The Levites, among the tribes, stood for the 
principle of good in the soul. This, after all, is the 
real priest. Where this is lacking, no matter how 
W3ll one is equipped as to true doctrine, life is 



26 



Pearls of Great Price 



without connection, both with the Lord and heaven. 
There can be no return, either on the part of the 
church or on the part of the individual, until this 
principle is among the other spiritual principles of 
the church and of the individual soul. Good of life 
is the end that a genuine religion has in view. 
Doctrines are essential — all that is meant by this 
genealogy is essential, but everything fails of. its 
purpose if there be no son of Levi among them — no 
real interior purpose of good by which God may 
unite Himself to man and man unite himself to God. 

THE FAST PROCLAIMED. 

The fast of the Jewish church had a wonderful 
spiritual significance. They were outward things 
among the Jews, but within them there was the 
lesson of the spiritual fast, which is to abstain from 
evils because they are sins against God. The natu- 
ral man is in the love of himself and the world; andi 
this love is infernal, arid when allowed to go un- 
checked fills life with untold disorders; for all evils 
originate in this fallen love. We must fast from it. 
We must afflict it — utterly deny its demands, and 
thus break its power over us. Abstinence from cer- 
tain articles of food for a season, such as Lent, may 
have in it for many people a spiritual value and use, 
but the real fast is the denial to the natural man 
of those things of his love that stand in the way ol 
the soul's growth in the unselfish life of the Lord 



Pearls of Great Price 



27 



The fast we must keep is wonderfully brought out 
in our Lord's saying: "If any man will be my dis- 
ciple, let him deny himself and take up his cross and 
follow me." When one does this he keeps the real 
fast; and the right way of life is shown him. He can 
then be led back from Babylon. He can then come 
into the Holy city and to the temple of God. As one 
keeps this fast, the power of evil is broken in his 
life and the spiritual man comes into freedom and 
dominance. 

THE HAND OF GOD. 

Ezra was shamed to ask of the King a band of 
soldiers and horsemen to help him against the 
enemy, because he had spoken unto the King say- 
ing: "The hand of God is upon all them for good 
that seek Him; but His power and His wrath is 
against all them that forsake Him." 

Here we have clearly set before us the beautiful 
lesson of trust in the Lord's power to deliver the 
church, and the man of the church, from the enemies 
of the spiritual life. Things of a mere worldly nature 
— motives of worldly policy — trust in the things 
:hat have power on the material plane, and that 
make their appeal to the natural man — all such out- 
ward means of help, we ought to be ashamed to look 
to. The great and triumphant appeal of the Chris- 
tian man should be to the Lord's power. "The Lord 
is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be 



28 



Pearls of Great Price 



afraid/' Here is the source of our strength against 
our spiritual foes — against all the forces that stand 
in our way as we seek to return to the Lord our God. 
The King's soldiers and horsemen are of no avail. 
And yet, here lies the great temptation. How fre- 
quently the church forgets that the hand of God is 
upon them for good who seek Him! The modern 
church, sad to say, has largely turned to the King's 
soldiers and horsemen for help, These things, when 
turned to, drag the church down to their own level. 
They fix a worldly motive in its heart and it becomes 
an institution, not only in the world, but of the 
world. Its aim becomes worldy, and it loses the 
true vision of the spiritual life and devotes its 
energies to matters of civic, moral and worldly life. 
The things of this world can minister only to the 
things of the world in man; and when the church 
forsakes the Lord's power, when it no longer seeks 
Him and His strength, and the guidance of His 
hand, while its numeric growth may be marked and 
its popularity great, yet it loses its spiritual power, 
and the work it was raised up to do is left undone. 
The gospel of the Word made flesh is lost and a mere 
humanitarian morality takes its place. The great 
redemption of Jesus Christ — the subjugation of hell, 
and its eternal subjection to the majesty of the 
Divine Humanity, is put aside, and in its stead 
there grows up the utterly fatal doctrine of Christ 
as "Man at his climax" — a great human example for 



Pearls of Great Price 29 



us — one whom we may follow as a perfect human 
pattern. The Holy Scriptures, when the church 
turns to the King's soldiers and horsemen for help, 
are reduced to the level of a venerable literature and 
human reason is made the supreme arbiter of truth, 
And what is true of the church, as an institution 
in the world, is true of the individual. No man can 
turn away from God and the invisible helper to the 
world and seek its help and employ its standards 
without making a supreme failure of life. True, he 
may seem to succeed on the outside, but on life's 
inside he makes the saddest of all failures. No man 
needs the King's soldiers and horsemen to help him. 
"Our help is in the Lord, who made the heaven and 
the earth." 

So it is Ezra's trust in the Lord must become our 
trust in Him. He will lead us back. His hand is 
the power of His victory over all forms of evil. He, 
in His human nature, met and conquered all the evil 
powers, and is present with us to deliver us from the 
hand of our enemies. When the church learns the 
meaning of redemption — learns and comes to really 
believe that Jesus Christ conquered the hells and 
holds them in subjection, then it shall come into 
its power and no enemy shall be able to stand up 
against it. 

This power is, of course, unseen, but of all power 
it is the greatest. And only as the church that is 
called by the name of Christ learns to accept Him 



30 Pearls of Great Price 



as the one only God and Saviour, who has all power 
in heaven and on earth, can she come into her own 
rightful place and return to the true order of spirit- 
ual life. When this recognition of redemption comes 
in all its fulness; when, instead of turning to the 
world for standards and help, the church turns to 
the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom is all the fulness of 
the Godhead, and from His strength goes forth to 
do its work, then shall be fulfilled the dream of the 
ages; for then "the church which the Lord founded 
on the word shall revive, stand upon its feet and 
draw breath again through heaven." 



Remains. — No man could live — especially as man 
— unless he had something living in him, that is, 
something of innocence, charity, and mercy. . . . 
This man receives from the Lord when an infant and 
a child. The things thus stored up are called in the 
Word " Remains." They are of the Lord alone with 
man. Man does not learn these states, but receives 
them as a gift from the Lord. As far as man in adult 
age extinguishes these states, he becomes dead. 
When man is regenerated these things are the 
beginning of it, and he is led into them, for the Lord 
operates through the remains. — Arcana. 



IV 

DEFEAT THROUGH DRUNKENNESS. 
I Kings xx. 1-21. 



Temperance is a word with wide meaning and 
application. Ordinarily, temperance is a word used 
in reference to drink. We all know that the intem- 
perate use of intoxicating liquors is an evil, and a 
thing to be shunned as a sin against God. The great 
temperance wave that is sweeping over our land to- 
day is caused by the feeling that the natural man 
should be clean and sober, for there comes a time 
in the life of the natural man when he sees that 
certain evils are hurtful to him, his standing and 
use. He may see this, however, without being in the 
least influenced by any spiritual motive. From 
purely worldly policy and selfish interest the natural 
man is able to make clean the outside of the cup and 
platter. An atheist may be a moral man and shun 
evil because it is evil — that is, because the practice 
of evil, brings him under the ban of the community 
and stands in the way of some selfish aim he may 
lave; but in such a case the evil is not removed, but 
only suppressed. 

The only way of getting rid of an evil is to shun it 
because it is sin against God. 

31 



32 



Pearls of Great Price 



The community, the state, the nation are only 
larger individuals; and the law that governs the in- 
dividual man is, at the same time, the law that 
governs the larger individual as represented in the 
community, the state and the nation. As the indi- 
vidual natural man, without any regard to God and 
the laws of the Divine order, is able to reform his 
outward life and practice temperance in all the 
forms of its application, so the larger natural man — 
the community, the state, the nation, may do the 
same thing. The natural man, both in the indi- 
vidual sense and in the collective sense, is governed 
by a selfish policy. He has no religion, but he may 
be very moral. 

This is not said as in any way a disparagement of 
the great movement of our day in the direction of 
ridding the community, the state, the nation of the 
drink evil. It is said to show that it is not neces-j 
sarily a spiritual movement. It may lead to it and 
because it may it should enlist our sympathy 
and co-operation. But drunkenness will not be 
removed until it is shunned because it is a sin 
against God. 

The world cannot be legislated into spiritual life 
for spiritual life must be chosen in freedom; and the 
evils inimical to it must be seen, confessed, repentec 
of and shunned because God says; a Thou shaL 
not." 



Pearls of Great Price 33 



THE SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE LESSON. 

The Lord has opened the inside of the Bible and 
thus revealed its spiritual sense ; and the story which 
furnishes the basis of today's lesson is replete with 
heavenly wisdom and clear in its warning against 
evils of all kinds. We have grown familiar with the 
thought that the Kingdom of Israel is the Bible type 
of the church, or, what is the same, the Kingdom of 
God in human souls and in the world. Drop out this~ 
spiritual conception of the Kingdom of Israel and 
we have left to us only history. 

The Bible is the Book of the human soul. Its 
letter is only the earthly form of the heavenly 
meaning within it. 

So, we come to think of this story as a scrap of 
Jewish history used by the Lord to convey to our 
minds the story of the conflict, both in the indi- 
vidual and in the church, that takes place with the 
evil forces that are opposed to heaven. 

Ahab was a wicked man, but that does not mean 
that as King of Israel he may not be used to repre- 
sent the truth that reigns as king in all who are 
following the Lord in the regeneration. 

The inspiration of the Bible is a thing entirely 
apart from the personal character of those who 
figure in its symbology. Ahab as Ahab does not 
represent the truth but Ahab as King does. It is 
the office and not the man that we are to think of. 



34 Pearls of Great Price 



As King of Israel, Ahab stands for the divine 
truth — the truth that reigns in the spiritual Israel — 
the Kingdom of God, for as it is the use of a king to 
reign and govern his kingdom, so it is the office and 
use of the divine truth to reign and govern in the 
kingdom of the soul. 

The spiritual standardization of life cannot be 
left to the individual. Divine truth is a thing of 
revelation from God. It is not the creation of 
man's mind. It is not a thing of human legislation. 
It is from God. And truth from God in His word, 
when looked to and obeyed, is a spiritual king and 
reigns in the kingdom of the soul and in the church 
which is God's kingdom in the world. 

THE KING OF SYRIA. 

As the land and kingdom of Israel represent the J 
church of the Lord, by an obvious analogy, the 
countries outside stand for definite states of mind 
related to the church. Syria, in a good sense, 
stands for the knowledge of good and truth which 
the natural mind may learn and from which it may 
serve the church as the Kingdom of God, but in the 
opposite or evil sense, Syria stands for those knowl- 
edges perverted and falsified and then arrayed 
against the church and its spiritual mission. It is in 
this evil sense that Syria is mentioned in this story. 
And no weapon formed against the church is morei 



Peaels of Great Price 35 



powerful than perverted spiritual knowledge, nor 
none so difficult to withstand and overcome. 

Syria, there is the natural mind — the natural race 
— mind, in which divine knowledges of goodness and 
truth have been perverted, falsified and then turned 
against the church. No more striking illustration 
can be found of this invasion of the church by 
perverted and falsified knowledge than is furnished 
by the Higher Criticism. It is really a Syrian 
invasion of the church today. It is reducing the 
Word of God to the level of a venerable literature in 
which we are to read and find not a revelation of the 
divine mind, but only the record of the growth of 
the Jewish mind in the divine idea — the record of 
the evolution of God from the Jewish consciousness. 
It is calling the modern church aw r ay from its 
apostolic faith and mission and making of it an 
institution which stands merely for ethical culture 
and more humanitarian morality. Its messengers 
are abroad demanding of the church the things of 
its very life — the spiritual things represented by the 
silver and the gold and the wives and children 
demanded of Israel by the messengers of Benhadad, 
King of Syria. And what is sad is the fact that the 
modern church has and is surrendering these things. 

And everything would go if it were not for the 
saving remnant that are left in the church — people 
who still have an internal hold on the Lord and 
heaven. 



36 Pearls of Great Price 



These are represented by the elders and the people 
who stood out against yielding to Benhadad's de- 
mand. They said: "Harken not unto him nor con- 
sent." This is what the remnant are saying today. 
They may not be able to see how the Bible is in- 
spired, but in their simple way they do love it, and 
when in simplicity they read it, they feel the Lord's 
atmosphere in it and have heaven opened to their 
souls. They will not consent to the surrender of its 
goods and truths — its gold and silver ; they will not 
give up their wives and children — t he love of the truth 
and the principles born of the union of love and 
truth in their minds. They hold on to these things. 

They may not be intellectually able to explain the 
Incarnation, but they do know, as a matter of deep 
experience, that Jesus Christ is divine and that He 
gives them power over evil. They cling to Him in 
simple faith. How thankful we, who have received 
the Lord in His new coming, should be that there is 
this saving remnant left! They are the elect for 
whose sake the evil days are shortened. They stand 
firm against the modern Syrians who from their per- 
verted and falsified knowledge would utterly 
destroy the doctrine of the inspiration of the Word 
and the Divine Humanity of the Lord. 

BENHADAD'S DRUNKENNESS. 

Benhadad stands for the reigning falsity in the 
natural mind of those who invade the church with 



Pearls of Great Price 



37 



low standards of doctrine and life, and for all who by 
perverted and falsified spiritual knowledge seek to 
remove from the church its spiritual silver and gold, 
wives and children. 

However wise they may appear in the eyes of 
men, as the angels look at them they see in them the 
dreadful intellectual thing for which Benhadad 
stands. 

Benhadad drinking himself drunk is only the pic- 
ture of the inflated and spiritually intoxicated intel- 
lect in air who exalt and deify their own intelligence. 
The Holy Scriptures say of such: "They are drunk, 
but not with wine." For to love one's own intelli- 
gence — to make one's own reason the arbiter of 
truth — to fight against the holy things of the 
church, is to be drunk spiritually. 

This spiritual drunkenness so widespread is far 
worse than any form of natural drunkenness. *The 
natural drunkard is often worse on the outside of his 
life than he is on the inside, and may — through hard 
experiences either here or hereafter, be saved for 
heaven; but the spiritual drunkard — the man who is 
intoxicated with his own self-derived intelligence, 
and proud of his virtues and wedded to his conceits, 
is in a sin that shuts heaven entirely out of his life. 

The fact is, natural drunkenness is only the effect 
of this spiritual drunkenness; and we shall have it so 
long as the spiritual cause that produces it exists. 
This form of drunkenness, when it lays hold of the 



38 Pearls of Great Price 



spiritual Syrians is a judgment upon them that 
brings the evil state to an end and thus furnishes 
the church the opportunity to utterly overcome it. 

AHAB'S VICTORY. 

The going out of the young men of the princes 
and the army of Israel which had been set in order 
by the King and the complete victory they gained 
over the Syrians — all this is the Lord's symbol way 
of telling us how, by means of the truths of the 
internal sense of the Word and the divine doctrines 
of the Lord's new Advent, all the spiritual foes of 
the church are driven back. 

This is the mission of the New church. It has 
come, not as a new sect, but as a newly revealed 
doctrine to define the Lord's Word and the divinity 
of His Humanity. And no weapon that is formed 
against it shall stand. 



The passion of the cross was the last of the Lord 
temptations. By means of it, He fully united H 
humanity with His indwelling Divinity, and com 
pletely subjugated the hells. This is taught in 
John xii. 23, 27, 28, 31, 32 ; 33. 



V 

NEHEMIAH'S PRAYER. 
Nehemiah i. 1-11. 



Nehemiah's prayer for Jerusalem, and the rem- 
nant of the Lord's people who were left in Jerusa- 
lem, is one of the most tender, solicitous and 
directly specific prayers recorded in the Bible. It 
breathes the spirit of piety and expresses the deepest 
love for the city, that was hallowed in his mind, by 
all the holy associations and traditions of his people. 
We all understand that the Jewish conception of 
their Jehovah was a very limited one, and that it 
was largely racial; but it was, with men like Nehe- 
miah, a very real one, and his very heart was in the 
prayer recorded in this chapter. 

But in our study of Nehemiah's prayer we must 
rise to the Christian conception of God and to the 
broader Christian conception of prayer, its nature 
and purpose; for the religion of the Incarnation, as 
now given in the new dispensation of the church, 
gives us very definite and rational explanations of 
prayer. 

In the past we were disposed to dwelL much on 
what prayer does not do — that it does not change 
the Lord, that it does not effect the established laws 

39 



40 Pearls of Great Price 



of divine order by which the Lord governs the 
world; and this aspect of the subject had its use, for 
it tended to change the erroneous ideas of the Mid- 
dle Age conception of God, as a being of mere 
caprice. But the time has come when, as a church, 
we must stop dealing with the negative side of this 
doctrine of prayer and come squarely over to the 
side of positive and affirmative teaching, and thus 
lead human souls to see rationally what prayer is 
and what it does do for all who sincerely pray to the 
Lord. 

WHAT PRAYER IS. 

"Prayer is conversation with God." This, of 
course, means that God is a person; and more than 
that, for it means that He is Man, not a man, but 
Man in Jesus Christ, the Lord. There can be no con- 
versation between the finite human soul and God, 
thought of merely as Principle, or as a divine 
Essence or as an omnific force. The Infinite, as sucli, 
and the finite, as such, cannot meet; for there is no 
ratio between the Infinite and the finite. 

The finite soul can have only a human concept of 
God. So all true prayer must have in it this human 
concept of the Infinite. We can say the worn 
"Infinite/' but we can form no idea of the Infinite. 
To do this there must be a point at which the Infi- 
nite and the finite may meet; and that meetiilg 
point is the Divine Humanity. 



Pearls of Great Price 



41 



Before the Incarnation, the infinite Jehovah man- 
ifested Himself through the Jehovah angel. He 
infilled an angel with His life to an extent that laid 
to sleep in the angel thus infilled the consciousness 
of his personal identity; and, for the time being, that 
angel revealed the Infinite under the human form. 

This was the mode of God's coming to man before 
His incarnation. But when man fell below the reach 
of an angelic humanity, God assumed a human 
nature in the person of His only begotten Son, 
Jesus Christ. This was an actual theophany — God 
revealed in the flesh. This humanity was glorified 
and made divine. It was united with the Divinity 
by which it was begotten. All that was finite was 
put off and replaced by what was divine, so that the 
very human of the Lord glorified is Jehovah. And 
this Jehovah Jesus is the true God and eternal life. 
He is God in a Divine Manhood. As the ancient 
Catholic creed expresses it: "In Him two whole and 
perfect natures, the Godhead and the Manhood, 
were united in one person, whereof is one Christ, 
very God, very Man." 

This is the Christian conception of God. And 
in this conception God becomes visible to thought 
as the Divine Man. 

Given this conception, prayer becomes conversa- 
tion with Jesus Christ, who is the visible God in 
whom is the invisible. 

In prayer we must address the Lord God, the 



42 Pearls of Great Price 



Saviour Jesus Christ. We are not to pray to the 
Father in Him, but to Him — to the Divine Human- 
ity, in whom is the Father and from whom is the 
Holy Spirit. Prayer, then, is the direct approach of 
the finite soul to Him who, in His person, is the 
humanization of the Infinite. 

And the purpose of prayer is not that of effecting 
any change in the Lord. Its purpose is to change 
the human mind, thus opening it to receive the 
blessed things the Lord is in the constant effort to 
give. True prayer opens the doors and windows of 
the soul, and then the sunlight of God comes in. Its 
purpose is not to have the Lord do our will, but to 
so attune us to the harmonies of the divine life that 
we shall be glad to do His will. This is the true 
evangelical doctrine of prayer that the church is 
called upon to make known and on which she must 
insist. 



INTERCESSORY PRAYER. 

Nehemiah's prayer was for the people of the prov- 
inces. It w T as a prayer for others. This form Df 
prayer is called intercessory prayer. The question 
is often asked: "What use is there in praying fpr 
others." The church has a very definite and rational 
answer to this question. In the first place, prayer 
for others brings us into sympathy with them — into 
a real desire to be helpful to them. And this is in 
itself a great good, not only to those for whom we 



Pearls of Great Price 



43 



pray, but to ourselves. By praying for others, we 
send out to them the very atmosphere of our love 
and thought. This atmosphere envelops them and 
forms a medium through which the Lord is able to 
act upon their minds. We wish them good, and the 
good we wish them affects them for good. Not only 
that, but the good we wish them and pray for comes 
flowing into our own hearts. "With what measure 
ye meet, it shall be measured to you again. " This is 
a law of the mind. How much more human souls 
would mean to us if we really prayed for them ! How 
much closer, in the spiritual fellowship of the church 
we would get to each other if we made it a daily 
practice to pray for each other! How much more 
our pastors and their sermons would mean to us, if 
instead of the critical attitude we often take toward 
them, we really prayed for them! We feel kindly 
toward those for whom we pray. The Lord bids us 
pray even for our enemies. And often an enemy is 
turned into a friend through the earnest and un- 
selfish prayer of the very one he is trying to injure. 
For when we pray for one who is seeking to do us 
harm, all resentment and revenge are absent, and 
we are only seeking to do them good, and that wish 
going forth in prayer to the Lord modifies the evil 
state in one's enemy. We live now, in the spiritual 
world; because we do, through its atmosphere the 
good we will to others is borne in upon them. 
"More things are wrought by prayer than this 



44 Pearls of Great Price 



world dreams of." But aside from this: Each one 
has his guardian angels; and when we pray for each 
other, the guardians — our guardian angels, and the 
guardian angels of the one for whom we pray, meet 
in the inner world, and form a channel through 
which the Lord's life flows in blessing. 

PRAYER FOR THE REMNANT IN THE CHURCH. 

Jerusalem is the great Bible symbol of the church. 
"Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, " who does not see 
in that command the exhortation — the Lord's call 
to us, to pray for the peace and prosperity of the 
church. Have we ever really prayed for the afflicted 
remnant in the provinces of what today is a devas- 
tated Christendom? How great is the affliction of 
this remnant! They are the Lord's own. They 
have a hold on him. But they are in spiritual afflic- 
tion. Simple in faith and life, they feel the utter 
lack of doctrinal guidance. The wall of Jerusalem 
is broken down. They have no protection against 
the falsities that surround them. Their own shep- 
herds do not lead them aright. They see that the 
church is falling away from its true mission. They 
see that the Gospel of the incarnation is no longer 
preached; that the Word is no longer opened to 
them. The walls of Jerusalem are broken dowjn. 
Yes, and "the gates thereof are burned with fire." 
The very truths that should admit into the lifelof 
heaven are destroyed by the fire — the love of crowds 



Pearls of Great Price 45 



ind of popularity. Surely this remnant need the 
H'ayers of all who have found, as a dwelling place, 
he Holy City, New Jerusalem. Instead of con- 
lemning them for their imperfect knowledge, we 
hould pray for them. 

The Lord's new church should be full of praying 
s T ehemiahs. And when we come to the state of 
nind which leads us to see the needs of the rem- 
lant left in the old Jerusalem, our prayer for them 
pill take on a practical form — the form of getting 
ready ourselves to be helpful to them. We shall 
[stop being self -admiration societies — mere doctrinal 
clubs, and learn how to be a church, with salvation 
as the watchword. When we begin to do this, the 
Lord brings His remnant in the spiritual provinces 
of Christendom, to the New Jerusalem — to the 
church restored to its apostolic doctrine and life, 
whose walls are great, high and impregnable, whose 
gates are of pearl and whose streets are of gold. The 
Lord will gather this remnant. His promise cannot 
fail. Let us then pray for them in their affliction. 
Let us bring to them the spiritual help which comes 
through an earnest desire to lead them to a city that 
hath foundation, whose builder and maker is God. 

And the prayer which we make for them will 
become real, and bring them relief, only as it goes 
forth in well and wisely directed efforts to bring to 
them a true understanding of God in Jesus Christ — 
a true understanding of the word opened in its 



46 Pearls of Great Price 



glorious spiritual sense and a true understanding of 
the life that leads to heaven. 

The time is at hand, we must pray and do. And 
the Remnant shall realize in the New Jerusalem the 
meaning of the Lord's words: "Yet will I gather 
them from thence, and will bring them unto the 
place that I have chosen to set my name there. " 



The doctrinal things of Faith are all from the 
Divine, which is infinitely above the human, 
Rational. The Rational receives its good and 
truth from the Divine. The Divine can enter into 
the Rational, but not the reverse, as the soul may 
enter into the body and form it, but the body cannot 
enter into the soul, or as the light may enter into 
shade, and modify it variously into colors, but the 
shade cannot enter light. 



VI 

NEHEMIAH'S PRAYER ANSWERED. 
Nehemiah ii. 1-11. 



The former lesson dealt with Nehemiah's prayer 
lor the remnant of his people. The present lesson 
Heals with the answer to his prayer. It is a very 
jtouching story and is full of helpful lessons. 
I Nehemiah was the king's cup-bearer and was 
//serving him with wine. The king noticed the sad- 
i ness of Nehemiah and asked him the reason for it. 
Nehemiah answered the king's question in the fol- 
lowing words: "Let the king live forever: why 
should not my countenance be sad, when the city, 
the place of my father's sepulchres lies waste, and 
the gates thereof are consumed by fire?" 

Here was a man whose heart was grieved over the 
sad plight of the remnant of his people and the con- 
dition of his beloved city Jerusalem. He had 
prayed to Jehovah for them and for his city. The 
Lord heard his prayer and the answer came in the 
form of the king granting every request of Nehe- 
miah. Here, in this story we find a concrete 
illustration of the power of prayer and a striking 
example of the Lord's willingness and ability to 
answer the prayers of His people. 

47 



48 



Pearls of Great Price 



But there is something deeper in the story than 
the mere fact of prayer for the temporal welfare of 
the remnant of Judah and the city of Jerusalem. 
It is a most blessed privilege granted to all who 
accept the Bible as the Lord's word, to enter within 
the veil of its mere letter and look upon the things 
that have relation to the Lord and the restoration of 
His church. 

JERUSALEM THE SYMBOL OF THE CHURCH. 

The church is the city of God and in the Word 
Jerusalem is constantly employed as the symbol of 
the church, especially as to its doctrines. If we were 
to drop out this spiritual meaning of Jerusalem how 
much we would lose of the true meaning of the 
Lord's Work: "I was glad when they said unto me, 
let us go up to the house of the Lord. Our feet shall 
stand within thy gates 0 Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a 
city that is compact together, whither the tribes go 
up." Has all this joy and gladness that filled the 
hearts of the people of Israel when they thought of 
their sacred city no meaning for those who live 
under the Christian dispensation? Our Lord said: 
"I came not to destroy but to fulfill." The Chris- 
tian church, as it is now revealed in all its glory, was 
involved in the Jewish representative of a church; 
and our Lord fulfilled in the extablishment of the 
Christian church all the things of which the Jewish 
dispensation was the shadow and symbol. 



Pearls of Great Price 49 

The gladness that filled the heart of the loyal 
Jew, when the time came for him to go up to the 
house of the Lord, is used in the Bible to express the 
gladness of heart with which the true Christian goes 
up to the Lord's house to worship Him in the 
beauty of holiness. 

The work days of the week have been full of trial, 
anxiety and strife. The man of the church has been 
up against the world and its low business ideals; he 
has been sorely tried and tempted. Now has 
dawned the Sabbath day, when he may drop the 
world, its pull and cares, and go up to the Lord's 
house to worship Him in freedom of soul, and learn 
from His Word the ways of right life and get from 
the service and sermon a new strength and inspira- 
tion, and his heart is glad. He turns to the psalms 
and reads: "I was glad when they said unto me let 
us go up to the house of the Lord/' and he knows 
that those words express his own delight in the 
service of prayer and praise in the church. 

And when he reads: "Jerusalem is a city that is 
compact together" he feels the thrill of joy that 
comes from knowing that the church has a compact 
system of truth. He is glad in his heart to know 
that the Lord has revealed to the church a system 
of doctrine that is compact, scriptural and reasona- 
ble — a city of doctrine that is strong in its spiritu- 
ality and beautiful in all its relations. 

The gates of this spiritual city are to him the 



50 Pearls of Great Price 



truths that admit him to the life that is not of this 
world; and he loves to bring his own life within the 
sphere of the church. So when he reads: "Our feet 
shall stand within thy gates 0 Jerusalem," he feels 
the joy of life lived according to the Lord's com- 
mandments and knows in his soul that those words 
treat of the daily life that is lived under the influ- 
ence of the church. 

Jerusalem is then the symbol of the Lord's church. 

NEHEMIAH'S GRIEF. 

The sadness of Nehemiah over the plight of his 
people and the broken walls and burned gates of 
Jerusalem is a faithful picture of the grief of the souls 
of all who love the church when they contemplate 
the sad condition into which it is brought by the 
world-spirit of pride and love for the things of mere 
sensuous life. 

This grief is felt by all who know that the church 
is the one agency in the world that stands in the 
centre of all other influences that work for man's 
good. 

The spiritual life must be ensued by the church 
in order to grow. While the organization is not 
the church it is the body through which the church 
functions the life of heaven; and no one can live as 
true a life apart from the agencies that the church 
employs for the culture of the spiritual life as the 
one who keeps within their influence and power. 



Pearls of Great Price 



51 



And when the spirit of the world breaks down the 
walls of the church — when the doctrinal protections, 
which the Lord provides for the soul are turned 
away from and lower ideals and standards substi- 
tuted for them, those who love the church and its 
divine doctrines grieve over such a state. They 
know that life, in all its phases, is affected by what 
the church stands for, and because they love the 
spiritual Jerusalem, they suffer and are sad when 
the worldly life and its ideals displace the life and 
ideals of the church. 

THE ANSWER TO NEHEMIAH'S PRAYER. 

The prayer of Nehemiah begins now to be an- 
swered. The king grants his request, and he leaves 
for his beloved city to repair its walls and gates. 

There was a connection between Nehemiah's 
prayer for the remnant of his people and his loved 
city and the king's grant of his request. The king 
knew nothing of Nehemiah's prayer, but, in grant- 
ing Nehemiah's request, his prayer was answered. 

A very important lesson — one full of comfort, is 
taught us here. Prayer does not change God, but it 
does create conditions through which He can act. 

The spiritual world is the world of causes. All 
that takes place in the natural world are only effects 
of causes operative in the inner cause-world. Nature 
is therefore only the theatre of effects whose causes 
are operating in the inner mind-world, of the soul. 



52 Pearls of Great Price 



Miracles are only openings in nature that let the 
supernatural in. There is a vital correspondence 
between the world of spirit and the world of matter. 
Spirit is the great moulding force. We seem to live 
in the natural world, but we do not. Man is essen- 
tially a spiritual being and lives now in the spiritual 
world. He loves and thinks in the inner world, and 
his body is only the material organism through 
which he functions his life of emotion and thought. 

What then is prayer? It is the affection and 
thought of man going forth from him in the inner 
world, affecting the spiritual atmospheres imme- 
diately about him and those atmospheres affecting, 
by correspondence, more interior atmospheres, until 
the Lord has formed for Him a spiritual condition 
through which He is able to act from above down 
into the natural world and effect His divine purpose. 

The king was not conscious of the spiritual forces 
that were operating upon his mind. He gave them 
no thought. But Nehemiah's sincere prayer had, 
through the co-operation of the angel world formed 
a channel through which the king was reached and 
affected. He granted Nehemiah's request, but 
Nehemiah's prayer was the cause in the inner world 
that set in motion the forces that were back of what 
the king did. 

Here we have the true philosophy of prayer — ofi 
prayer even for temporal things. Temporal things 
belong to nwm but the Lord has regard, to what we 

i 



Pearls of Great Price 



53 



call temporal things only so far as they ma} r be 
made to conduct to eternal and spiritual ends. 

One may pray for a temporal blessing and receive 
it if the Lord sees that it will serve a spiritual pur- 
pose. No true prayer ever goes unanswered; for the 
Lord gives to the prayerful soul the very thing 
needed, whether the answer comes in the form we 
desire or not. 

The Lord hears the prayers of His people. He 
answers the prayers of His people. He says to all: 
"Ask and ye shall receive; seek and ye shall find; 
knock and it shall be opened unto you." 

But He does not answer prayer in any arbitrary 
way, nor without the co-operation of man. We 
must work for the things we pray for. 

SANBALLAT AND TOBIAH. 

Sanballat and Tobiah "grieved exceedingly that 
there was come a man to seek the welfare of the 
children of Israel." 

Whenever good flows down to bless man, eviT rises 
up to oppose it. The love of self and the love of 
the world are very strikingly pictured to us in this 
story by the opposition and intrigue of Sanballat 
and Tobiah. 

These two loves, when allowed sway, devastate 
the church; and whenever forces are put in opera- 
tion for the restoration and upbuilding of the Lord's 
kingdom they are grieved, for the restoration of the 



54 



Pearls of Great Price 



church means their overthrew. Thus the construc- 
tive forces must battle against the destructive 
forces. This is true in the work of individual regen- 
eration, and true in the building up of the church as 
the kingdom of God. 

But the work of restoration went on under Nehe- 
miah, and the work of individual regeneration and 
of the restoration of the church to power will go on 
if the Lord's servants are only faithful to their great 
mission. 



Everyone who lives in the good of charity and 
faith is a Church, and is a Kingdom of the Lord, and 
is hence called a Temple. A Temple in the supreme 
sense signifies the Lord as to the Divine Human, in 
special as to the Divine Truth. In a representative 
sense temple signifies the Lord's Church in Heaven 
and also the Lord's Church in the world. A voice 
out of the Temple, an influx from the Lord from the 
inmost of Heaven. — Arcana and Apocalypse Re- 
vealed. 



I 



VII 

THE PSALM OF THANKSGIVING. 
Psalm cm. 



The Lord is the source and giver of all good on all 
planes of life. Man is only a recipient. He is unable 
to create. He receives what is created, and, because 
he is endowed with freedom, he can use or abuse 
what comes to him. The Lord, because man is a 
spiritual being, regards him from that view-point, 
and His Providence regards what is eternal in him. 
His vision takes in eternity and man's life in the 
spiritual world. His end, or purpose, in the creation 
of the human race is a heaven of angels; and there is 
never a single departure from this divine purpose. 

The material world was created as the environ- 
ment of man as a natural being; and so far as his 
material body and natural mind are concerned, the 
world is ample for all their needs. The horizon of 
the senses bounds all his aspirations as a natural 
man; for as a natural man he never transcends 
nature and its provisions for his needs. But he is 
more than a mere natural man with animal needs. 
He is also a spiritual man and as such he has needs, 
when they are awaked, for which no provision is 
made by nature. This side of man calls for a differ- 

55 



56 



Pearls of Great Price 



ent environment. The church , where the Word is 
understood — the church with its means of spiritual 
instruction and culture, is the provision the Lord 
makes for man as a spiritual being. It is the 
divinely provided environment of the eternal and 
spiritual in him. 

But both as a natural man and as a spiritual man 
he is a recipient of the divine bounty. And the les- 
son for this week calls upon us to acknowledge with 
grateful hearts our dependence upon the Lord for all 
things. On the material side of life, men are so 
prone to forget the Lord's benefits. They have 
such a manifest agency in the procuring of the 
natural goods of life that they seldom stop to think 
of the real source of them. They are ungrateful 
and in many instances unthankful. 

This is a great sin, and we are all more or less 
guilty of it. This psalm comes to call us back from 
our self-confidence, from our forgetfulness of the 
Lord, to a heartfelt acknowledgment of Him, the all 
good and bountiful giver of benefits — the source of 
all good and blessing on all planes of life. 

A THANKFUL HEART. 

A thankful heart is a wonderful possession. How 
much we all have to be thankful for! There are 
people who go through life complaining of provi- 
dence — complaining of life — of people and of all 
that surrounds them. This is a very unfortunate 



Pearls of Great Price 67 

state of mind. It closes the eyes to the innumerable 
blessings that come every day, and it hardens the 
heart and embitters life. Little can be done for such 
people. They are closed. Life with its full tide of 
blessings cannot come to them. It is a state of mind 
that one should shun as sinful. For in a measure we 
make the world in which we live and get out of life 
what we put into it. The Lord loads us with benefits 
on the material plane; but one should learn to get 
the Lord's view-point. He regards the inner spirit- 
ual life of His children, and whatever He gives or 
withoulds is for the sake of what is eternal in His 
children. The thanksgiving season, the day set 
apart for general thanksgiving, will fail of its pur- 
pose if we do not rise to this plane of thinking. For 
material blessings, in whatever form they may 
come, are for the sake of deeper things. The Lord's 
regard for them is not for them apart from the 
spiritual end that He has in view; for to Him they 
have no significance except as He can use them for 
our eternal good. 

The truly thankful heart is the one that recog- 
nizes and acknowledges this truth. For when we 
recognize ourselves as spiritual beings placed in this 
world for training and preparation for heaven we 
shall soon learn to be thankful for all that the 
Heavenly Father either sends to us or permits to 
come into our lives. He may send riches to one and 
permit another to live without them, but that does 



58 



Pearls of Great Price 



not mean that He is doing more for the one to whom 
He gives abundantly of the good things of this 
world than to the one to whom they are denied. He 
loves both alike. He does for both just what is 
best for both. So we should always have a thank- 
ful and grateful heart, knowing that the Lord, in 
His infinite love and divine wisdom, is seeking the 
eternal good of His children. He gives good gifts 
unto His children. 

THE SPIRITUAL THANKSGIVING. 

The great mission of the Lord's New Church is to 
come to men with its spiritual ministries and to lift 
them to the spiritual plane of life. It does not come 
to minister to the world in them. This is one reason 
for the slow numeric growth of the church. If the 
church should drop to the level of the world in her 
ministries to men, leaving out of her message the 
great spiritualities of life, the crowds would flock 
to her. But the church cannot do this and still be 
the church. Her emphasis must be laid on the 
spiritual side of life. 

The spiritual life is the real life. The spiritua 
world is the real world. Man is a soul and has ai 
outer body. The Lord is the Incarnate Word of Goc 
and the source of all life. Man is only a form oF 
life. He is not life. Real blessings are spiritual, no: 
material. These are the eternal verities of the Chris- 
tian religion, and the New Church must hold them 




Pearls of Great Price 59 

up and stand for them. To do anything less than 
this is treason. 

This is the burden of our lesson. "Bless the Lord, 
O my soul, and all that is within me bless His holy 
name." The human soul is to bless the Lord. He is 
the source of all that we are to be thankful for. We 
are to be thankful to Him. We all have the disposi- 
tion to think of things — to bless things. It is the 
Lord that we must think of. 

This creates a spiritual thanksgiving. Think of 
the utterly erroneous ideas the church of the past 
had of the Lord! Think of the spiritual, rational and 
scriptural idea that is now coming to take the place 
of the old concept of God ! 

The Lord, in His infinite mercy, has taken away 
the seals from His Word and opened, through a 
rational revelation, the human understanding to see 
Him in His Word as He really is. How beautiful is 
the vision of Him in His open Word! We see God's 
glory shining in the face of Jesus Christ. The infinite 
divinity is humanized in the glorified Christ. He is 
made personal to us in the Divine Manhood of 
Jesus Christ. We can now see Him not as a divine 
principle in Christ, but see Him as Christ the Lord 
and worship Him as Jehovah in His humanity. 
What a vision of God this is! "Bless the Lord, O 
my soul." 

Can't we all be thankful for this vision of God in 
Christ? For of all the blessings that come to man 



60 



Pearls of Great Price 



none is comparable to this one — the vision of the 
Divine Humanity. Are we truly thankful for this 
wonderful revelation of Jesus Christ as God revealed 
in the terms of our own life? What is life worth 
without this doctrine? It is the one supreme thing 
that gives purpose to human living — the one stand- 
ard of values. Truly to see the Divine Humanity is 
to have in one the foundation and reason for spirit- 
ual thanksgiving. 

JEHOVAH AS REDEEMER IN HIS HUMANITY. 

The vision of the one true God in Jesus Christ 
leads the mind to the recognition of the Divine 
Human as the Redeemer. This is the triumphant 
note struck in this psalm: "Who redeemeth thy 
life from destruction." Here is ground for spiritual 
thanksgiving. The vision of the Lord as Redeemer 
— how marvelous it is! He redeems human life from 
destruction. Think of what it means. Evil is the 
Destructive Principle. It enters and tears apart thfe 
mind from the Lord and brings man under its do- 
minion. It did this to such an extent that nothing 
but the actual assumption, by Jehovah, of a human 
nature in the world could break its force and powei. 
The Lord came. He took our nature upon Him. Hie 
met evil on its own plane. He conquered hell. Hje 
redeemed the human race. He restored the spiritual 
equilibrium of the moral universe. He glorified His 
Humanity and is now the Redeemer to eternity. 

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Pearls of Great Price 61 

[This redemption was universal. But it must be 
realized in the individual. "Who redeemeth thy life 
from destruction. " From the Lord's Divine Hu- 
manity there came redeeming and constructive 
forces. He is in personal touch with individual life. 
If one turns to Him He will, by those constructive 
forces redeem one's life from destruction. How 
thankful we should be for this divine power that 
comes into life and redeems it from all that is evil ! 
/Nothing that the world can. do for one is compara- 
ble to this blessing. How it breaks off the chains of 
/man's bondage! How it frees him from the power of 
/fear! How it fills life with joy. The whole church 
/ should make this thought of the Lord the ground of 
the deepest thankfulness of soul. 

THE LORD'S SYMPATHY. 

In redeeming the human race, the Lord endured 
every form and degree of temptation; for it was 
through His temptation combats that He overcame 
the powers of evil. He has tasted death for every 
man. He knows just how to get near to us, just 
how to bring the needed help. His heart is full of 
love and sympathy. "He pitieth them that fear 
Him." How thankful we should be for the divine 
pity ! He does not condemn, He comes to save. "He 
knoweth our frame; He remembereth that we are 
dust." God be praised for all this! He knows what 
our temptations are; He sees our weakness. But He 



62 Pearls of Great Price 



knows, not to cast us away, but to help us; not to 
turn away from us, but strengthen us in our weak- 
ness. This, then, is the true thanksgiving: (1) to see 
the Lord in His Divine Humanity; (2) to see Him 
as the personal redeemer; (3) to see Him as the 
loving and sympathizing Saviour. Then be thank- 
ful unto Him and bless His name. 



VIII 

NEHEMIAH REBUILDS THE WALL 
OF JERUSALEM. 

Nehemiah iv. 17-18 



The lesson for this week brings vividly before us 
[the great work of Nehemiah and his helpers in re- 
building the wall of Jerusalem. It is not difficult to 
see the patriotic spirit that took possession of the 
people under Nehemiah's leadership. It was deep 
and all embracing. Everything else, for the time 
being, was lost sight of. The one absorbing thought 
was to restore the wall of their loved city. The spirit 
which moved the people was not only patriotic, but 
it was religious. All that was sacred in their religious 
and national life centered in their holy city. Its wall 
had been broken down. Its gates had been destroyed. 
Their work was to rebuild, and they entered upon it 
with united heart and mind and kept at it until the 
work was done. 

Do we not all feel that there is something deeper 
in this story than the mere record of rebuilding, 
literally, the wall of the city of Jerusalem? That 
which makes the Bible the source of light; that 
which gives to it the power which we feel when we 

63 



64 



Pearls of Great Price 



reverently read it, is not its historical narratives 
interesting though they are, but what lies back of 
them — their real spiritual content. 

THE WALL OF JERUSALEM. 

The cities of the Bible stand for something more 
than mere material cities. They stand for organized 
expressions of the spiritual life. We all recognize 
Babylon as the symbol of the spiritual life perverted 
and turned hellward. The city and tower of Babel 
said to have been built of bricks and slime by the 
people who journeyed from the east to the plains of 
Shinar was the organized expression of the per- 
verted life of the Ancient church. The people of 
that church had lived near the Lord. They at first 
dwelt in the east — the east of the soul, and knew no 
language but that of love to the Lord and the neigh- 
bor. But when they turned away from the Lord to 
themselves, that decline was put in the form of an 
allegory descriptive of a people who journeyed from 
the east to the plains of Shinar. And the city of 
Babel, they are said to have built, was the symbol — 
the outward expression of the low state of life they 
lived — the outward form of the life of loving them- 
selves and their own intelligence into which they 
came as a result of their decline from the love of God 
and one another. 

Babylon thus became the symbol of the love of 
self and the love of ruling over the spiritual life of 



Pearls of Great Price 65 



men. And because the Roman Catholic religion 
stands for priestly rule, we all recognize Babylon as 
the Bible picture of that love of rule from the love 
of self. This is the meaning of the city of Babylon 
mentioned in the book of Revelation. 

On the other hand, Jerusalem, when used in a 
good sense, is the symbol of the church grounded in 
the love of the Lord and the neighbor. It stands for 
the church as the organized and outward expression 
of the spiritual life. 

All life must be environed. The church must have 
its wall. The wall of Jerusalem has two meanings: 
(1) It stands for that which bounds and determines 
the spiritual life, and (2) it stands for that which 
protects the spiritual life from assaults from with- 
out. This is the meaning of the wall great and high 
that surrounded the Holy City John saw coming 
down from God out of heaven. 

Think of the wall of Jerusalem in both these ways 
and you will see its wonderful meaning. (1) Think 
of it as the symbol of the church's doctrine which 
environs and bounds the spiritual life of man. To 
live inside the wall of Jerusalem is, spiritually, to 
live within the limits of the Lord's ten command- 
ments. The man, for instance, who shuns evils — the 
evils forbidden in the Commandments, because they 
are sins against God, lives inside the wall of Jerusa- 
lem. His life is .bounded — terminated by the teach- 
ing of the word of God. He is safe. (2) Think of it as 



66 Pearls of Great Price 



the symbol of the church's doctrine as it presents 
itself as an impregnable defense, as something that 
surrounds and stands between the spiritual life and 
the assaults made upon it from without. The 
doctrine that fixes in the mind a rational belief in 
the Lord's Divine Humanity; that makes the Incar- 
nation rational by revealing its process, what a wall 
of defense this doctrine is! It protects the spiritual 
life of the church. Hell cannot prevail against it. 
False reasonings have no power in the presence of 
this wall. And what is true of the doctrine of the 
Divine Humanity is true of every doctrine of the 
church. So that, taken as a whole, the wall of Jeru- 
salem is the symbol of the church's doctrine, both 
as a boundary of the spiritual life and as a protec- 
tion from the assaults of spiritual enemies. But 
in this story, we read of terrible breaches which had 
been made in the wall of Jerusalem, and of Nehe- 
miah and his helpers repairing the wall of the city. 
What do these breaches in the wall stand for? Let 
us see. For instance — the simple doctrine that God 
came personally into the world by the gate of birth 
— that Christ's humanity was conceived by the 
Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary, and that 
the Father was in Him and the Holy Spirit from 
Him; the simple doctrine that the Holy Scriptures 
are the Lord's Word, that He spoke them through 
historian, law-giver, prophet, seer and evangelist; 
the simple doctrine that the spiritual life is a thing 



Pearls of Great Price 67 



distinct from the natural life and that it is given to 
all who repent of evil ways, believe in the Lord and 
keep His Commandments — the simple doctrine 
which embraced these three essentials of Chris- 
tianity was the wall around the Apostolic church. It 
determined the life of all within the church and was 
a protection from the pagan world outside. But the 
age of controversy came — doctrinal disputations 
arose. The age of the councils dawned. Things had 
to be defined. The battering-rams of the human 
intellect were brought up against this wall of Jerusa- 
lem. And the breaches were made, God divided into 
three equally divine persons; the Scriptures were 
interpreted literally, salvation was made a matter 
of mere faith and sacraments. These were the 
breaches in the wall of the church, and the church 
itself was rent and torn and trodden down. The 
church was unable to withstand these falsities. She 
lay in ruin. 

REBUILDING THE WALL OF JERUSALEM. 

The rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem, under the 
leadership of Nehemiah, beautifully pictures to us 
what is now being done by the blessed teaching of 
the Lord's New-Church. She is really Nehemiah 
rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem. The New-Church 
brings a divinely revealed teaching into the world, 
and by means of it she repairs the wall and gates 
of the spiritual Jerusalem. She comes with power to 



68 Pearls of Great Price 



rebuild — to restore. The trinitarian breach in the 
wall of the spiritual city of God is repaired by the 
rational teaching that God is one in essence and in 
person, in whom there is a divine trinity of love, 
wisdom and power or operation. That this trinity is 
in the Lord Jesus Christ and is revealed in His 
Divine Humanity. The divine trinity is rebuilt, and 
the breach in the wall, made by tripersonalism, no 
longer exists. 

The Bible as God's word — the breach made here 
by a mere literal interpretation — you see it no more, 
for this part of the wall is rebuilt by the teaching 
that the Bible as God's Word is a spiritual book; 
that it contains a spiritual sense, distinct from its 
letter; that this spiritual sense has been revealed 
and the law of its interpretation made known. The 
breach no longer exists in the wall. 

The spiritual life — the doctrine of it, has been 
clearly given. It is the Apostolic doctrine that 
spiritual life comes through faith, repentance and 
regeneration, restored. But the teaching of the 
New-Church defines what faith, repentance and 
regeneration are. This was lacking in the early 
church. And the breach which Roman Catholicism 
with its Sacramental teaching and Protestantism 
with its faith alone teaching, made in the wall 
around the spiritual Jerusalem is rebuilt. There is 
no longer any breach in the wall at this point. And 
so with everything else. All is restored, and the 



Pearls of Great Price 69 

great symbol of all this work of restoration and re- 
building is seen in St. John's vision of the descent of 
the holy city New Jerusalem with a wall great and 
high, and in the wall twelve gates of pearl. 

THE OPPOSITION NEHEMIAH MET WITH. 

All great undertakings meet with opposition. 
Hell is an organized life. It is opposed to God, 
heaven and the church. A worldly and doctrinally 
latitudinarian church gives hell no concern. But 
when the Lord comes to restore — to rebuild and 
thus to establish a real church, hell is moved from 
beneath to meet and oppose His coming. When He 
made His First Advent, He had to meet and subju- 
gate the hells. This is no less true of His Second 
Advent. The dragon stands ready to destroy the 
Man-child as soon as He is born and to drown the 
heavenly woman with a flood. It is all pictured to 
us in this story. Listen to it: "But it came to pass 
that when Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabians, the 
Ammonites and the Ashdodites heard that the walls 
of Jerusalem were made up, and that the breaches 
began to be stopped, then they were very wroth, and 
conspired, all of them together, to come and fight 
against Jerusalem and to hinder it." But the work 
went on to completion. 

So of our work today. We meet with the opposing 
destructive forces. They conspire against what we 
are doing for the Lord and humanity; but they are 



70 Pearls of Great Price 



powerless to harm the Lord's servants, nor can they 
hinder the work. The work of the New-Church is 
constructive. No weapon that is formed against her 
can prosper and every tongue that defames her shall 
be brought into judgment. Only our own disloyalty 
and indifference can "hinder the work. It is a great 
work. It takes time; but faithfulness will accom- 
plish it. And then we can say : 

"I love thy Church, 0 God, 
Her walls before me stand. " 



IX 

EZRA AND NEHEMIAH TEACH 
THE LAW. 
Nehemiah VIII. 



The wall of Jerusalem had been rebuilt and the 
gates had been restored. There was great rejoicing 
among the people. But during the long captivity, 
the remnant that remained at home were without 
the ministrations of their religion. The book of the 
Law was lost and they were ignorant of the require- 
ments of the Law. But now the Law of God con- 
cerning the people had been found, and what an 
inspiring scene it was to see all the people come 
together to hear read to them the laws and statutes 
of the Lord their God. From the pulpit erected for 
the purpose, Ezra, the scribe, read to them daily 
from the book of the Law, and the people gave heed 
to all its words. It meant the restoration of their 
religion. Enthusiasm swayed the people and they 
renewed their covenant with the Lord, God of their 
fathers. It was the inauguration of a new religious 
era for the Jews — a deep revival of soul in all that 
pertained to their religious and national life. As we 
look back upon this scene our own souls kindle with 

71 



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Pearls of Great Price 



zeal, and we catch something of the spirit that 
moved them. 

But there is something deeper in this story than 
the mere record of a people's rejoicing over the 
restoration of the Book of the Law. The Bible 
treats of the church. Under the cover of its letter 
there lies the wonderful story of the inner Word 
which is the source of all wisdom to angels in heaven 
and to men on earth. 

THE BOOK OF THE LAW. 

The Christian conception of the Book of the Law 
includes the whole of the Divine Word — all of the 
divinely inspired books bound in the volume which 
we call the Bible. This thought broadens the whole 
subject. God gave the Book of the Law. He is the 
real author of the Word. He realty wrote a book, 
and it is the only divine book in the world ; and it 
behooves us as Christians to form worthy ideas of it. 
The time was when the literal interpretation of the 
Bible met all the spiritual needs of the church. The 
scientific age had not dawned. The earth was the 
centre. The heavenly bodies were mere points of 
light in the heavens. Science was unknown. Men, in 
their thought of the world, were governed by mere 
appearances. But the age of science came. Men 
gained rational ideas of the world. And with the 
dawn of the scientific age, the literal interpretation 
of the Bible was no longer possible. The new Cos- 



Pearls of Great Price 73 

mology, the science of geology, the scientific con- 
cept of evolution and development, together with 
the new anthropology, displaced the literal interpre- 
tation. Then historical criticism arose, bringing 
with it the light of modern scholarship, and throw- 
ing this light on the pages of the Bible, the Higher 
critics swept away the foundation on which rested 
the old literal interpretation. 

The result of all this criticism has been to reduce 
the Bible to the level of a venerable literature. The 
Bible was really lost, so far as any genuine under- 
standing of it was concerned. Its influence was 
largely gone. The church had only its letter — its 
mere outside, and every attempt to interpret it 
literally brought it into open antagonism to well 
attested and established facts of, science. The 
church could no longer defend its claim. It was a 
lost book. This is really the inside of the story of the 
loss of the Book of the Law. 

THE FINDING AND RESTORATION OF THE BOOK 
OF THE LAW. 

The Book of the Law found is only the outward 
fact of the more interior fact of the finding of the 
real Word of God. "The world by wisdom knew not 
God." We know God only from His revelation. 
God is the only way to Himself. When the letter 
failed God opened the inside of the Bible as the book 
of the law and thus restored it to His church. He 



74 Pearls of Great Price 



did this once for all. The Book of the Law has been 
really found in the opening, by a rational doctrine, 
of its divine content. 

In the great volume of nature, as the record of 
God's works, we have recorded in a compact and 
rigid succession of facts the rules and methods of 
the divine Logic. In the volume of Scripture, we 
have presented from their deepest grounds, the 
principles and forms of the divine Rhetoric. 

The Bible proceeds from the same source that 
gave existence to nature. The created imagery of 
nature, by a universal and immutable law, passed 
over and entered into the structure of the literal 
sense of the Word of God. Thus we have the 
created world and the written Word — the Kosmos 
and the Logos, and they answer to each other. 

The outward structure of the Bible is therefore 
symbolic. Its letter is the correspondential medium 
of conveying to human minds the thoughts of the 
Divine Thinker. 

The Word by which God made all things, came 
down from Him and spread itself out before men 
mantled in allegory, history, biography, chronology, 
legend, parable, visions, and miracles. These things 
constitute the body, the outer structure of the Book 
of the Law. The real Word of God is within this 
outer body — is as the soul and life of it. 

Between the literal sense as the body and the 
inner sense as the organic soul of the Bible, there is 



Pearls of Great Price 75 

jan absolute correspondence. The natural things of 
the letter correspond to the divine and spiritual 
things of the spirit of the Word, and through this 
correspondence the mind of God is revealed. 

The Bible is therefore a divine creation and not a 
mere written document. It is the divine love and 
wisdom incarnated in human language. The real 
content of the Bible is the Lord Himself; for He is 
the Word. Here then is the true concept of the 
Holy Scriptures as the Book of Law. Such is the 
real structure, spiritual and natural, of the Bible. 

The revelation of this doctrine of what the Word 
is and how it was given is the great spiritual fact 
back of the finding of the long lost Book of the Law. 

THE LAW BY WHICH THE BOOK OF THE LAW IS 
OPENED 

The law of correspondence is the fixed and estab- 
lished relation existing between cause and effect. 
All causes are spiritual, and in this world all effects 
are natural. The whole creation corresponds to the 
creative and causal divine love and wisdom in the 
mind of God. The whole natural world, in a lower 
sense, corresponds to the inner spiritual world. The 
material body of man corresponds to the spiritual 
body of man. This is a fixed relation. It is a 
universal law. 

So the letter of the Bible corresponds to its inner 
structure or spiritual sense as an effect corresponds 



76 Pearls of Great Price 

to its producing cause. This law was no more an 
invention by Swedenborg than the law of gravita- 
tion was an invention by Newton, It was from the 
beginning. The Ancient churches regarded it as the 
very science of sciences. In the fall of the Ancient 
churches it w T as lost as a science, still in a way it was 
preserved in mythology. But it has been restored, 
and in the doctrines of the New Church is shown to 
be the law according to which the Word of God was 
written. It shows us that the Bible is a book with 
another book inside of it. The inside book treats 
solely of divine and spiritual things. It is the book 
of the Lamb's life — of the life of the Word that was 
made flesh in Jesus Christ. In a lower sense, it 
treats of man's regeneration as the finite image of 
the Lord's glorification, and in a still lower sense, of 
the church as the Lord's kingdom among and in 
men. These sublime subjects all lie within the 
letter of the W^ord and are brought to light by the 
law of correspondence. So, when in this stoiy, we 
read of the people listening to the. reading of the 
law, seeking to understand it, we have a picture of 
what some day will be realized in this world, when 
hungry souls will turn to the Word of life, listen to 
its wonderful lessons and spiritually understand 
them through this divine law of correspondence. 
Then shall come the true Christian Church in all its 
glory and power. 



Pearls of Great Price 77 



THE SECOND COMING OF THE LORD. " 

The opening of the inside writing of the Bible is 
the second coming of the Lord. The old idea of 
Christ's literal and personal return to the earth has 
largely disappeared from the modern pulpit, but 
with the passing of the old concept of the second 
coming, the churches have been left without any 
definite teaching on the subject. 

The mission of the New Church is to proclaim 
His coming in the Word. He, as the Lamb in the 
midst of the throne, took off the seals of the Great 
Book and revealed its spiritual sense. "Lo, I come 
in the volume of the Book written of Me." The 
Lord has come. His second coming in the revelation 
of the spiritual sense of the Word is an accomplished 
fact. He stands personally revealed in His Word. 
He has come in the clouds of its letter with power 
and great glory. And this coming of the Lord in 
His Word was not only the real finding of the Book 
of the Law, but it established it as a divine book and 
gave to human minds a rational basis for faith in it 
as a divine revelation. 

EZRA IN HIS PULPIT, 

Ezra stood in a pulpit and proclaimed the lost law 
to the people. This is the duty of the New Church. 
She has a divinely given message. She has the open 



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Word of God. Her pulpit is not to be a rostrum from 
which to entrain men with discussions of a worldly 
character. It is the sacred place set apart for the 
opening of the Word of God. 

And when her pulpits ring clear with the message 
that the long lost word of life has been found; that 
its inner sense has been revealed; that the Lord has 
come in it for the establishment of the Christian 
Church anew; when she learns to make this message 
real to men, putting it in the terms of their own 
lives, the age of materialism will end, and all over 
the world men and women will turn their feet 
toward the gates of the Holy City, glad to learn the 
way of life. 



X 



NEHEMIAH ENFORCES THE LAW 
OF THE SABBATH. 

Nehemiah xiii. 15-22. 

The restoration of the book of the Law led di- 
rectly to the restoration of the observance of the 
laws governing the Sabbath day. It was no small 
task to instruct the people in these laws and to call 
them back to the keeping of the Sabbath day of 
their religion; but Nehemiah succeeded; and with 
the Sabbath restored, a new era was inaugurated 
and the people came into, at least, a more orderly 
form of life. 

THE MEANING OF THE JEWISH SABBATH. 

The Jews had no idea of the spiritual meaning of 
their Sabbath day of rest. The Mosaic story of the 
creation was conceived of literally. In six literal 
days, God created the heaven and the earth and 
literally rested from His labors on the Sabbath day. 
Their thought was confined wholly to the material 
plane. This materialistic concept and interpreta- 
tion of Genesis' story of the creation passed over to 
the Christian Church, and until the dawn of the 
scientific age, bringing, as it did, rational concep- 

79 



80 Pearls of Great Price 



tions of the process of creation and some idea of the 
age of the world, the theologians of the Christian 
Church never dreamed of any other than a literal 
interpretation of the story. And when geologists 
first gave to the world the marvelous story of the 
rocks, and anthropologists the history of man on 
this planet, their facts were disputed and every 
effort made by theologians of the day to discredit 
the teaching of science and to hold the church to 
the literal interpretations. But this could not be 
done. The rational and scientific age had come, and 
its' light could not be put out. 

The church soon came to see this, and then it 
largely abandoned the strictly literal method, and 
borrowing the terms of science, began to think of 
the days of creation in the terms of science and to 
speak of them as "geologic periods." Winchel, in 
his "Reconciliation of Religion and Science," was 
among the first to adopt this method. But this 
interpretation utterly failed to meet the situation; 
for it came far short of answering the questions and 
silencing the doubts science had raised. Later on, 
the schools of the Higher Criticism arose within the 
church; and this school of thought repudiated the 
whole story as in any sense scientific, and told the 
church that the story was only a myth from 
Babylonia — mere folk lore, and of no consequence 
to christian^. 

What a wonderful providence is seen in the fact 



Pearls of Great Price 81 



that long before the story of the rocks was written — 
long before any of the questions that modern 
science has confronted the church with, were raised, 
the Lord, through a prepared human instrument, 
gave, in rational form, the spiritual content of the 
Mosaic Cosmology! 

The New Church comes not as a new sect, but as 
the new dispensation of the Christian Church. The 
Christian Church made new by the revelation of the 
divine and spiritual content of the word by God. It 
is the new Christian Church. And in the Lord's own 
opening of the spiritual sense of the Holy Scriptures, 
the story of the six days 7 work of creation and the 
Sabbath of rest, we find a most rational and beauti- 
ful interpretation. It does not, in the least conflict 
with science; but it does open the meaning of the 
whole story and fill the reverent mind with wonder 
at its marvelous content. The story is a divine 
parable — an earthly story with a heavenly mean- 
ing. It is the story of man's spiritual creation — his 
regeneration told under the form or symbol of an 
outward creation. Time will not permit of any- 
thing other than a mere outline. 

The outside material heaven and earth are sym- 
bols of the inside heaven and earth— the higher 
spiritual mind and the lower natural mind — the 
heaven and the earth of the human soul. The six 
days of labor, in which God is said to have made the 
heaven and the earth, are symbols of the distinct 



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Pearls of Great Price 



stage? of the regeneration of man. Beginning with 
the dawn of the light of truth and progressing stage 
by stage, the story proceeds until the spiritual man 
made in God's image and after His likeness appears. 
These are spiritual days of labor — of struggle and 
conflict; but they end in a beautiful state of peace 
and rest, which, in the literal story is called the 
Sabbath. It all is a thing to be realized in the 
human soul. 

When the commandments were given from the 
mount the Sabbath day — the literal day which the 
Jews were commanded to keep, became a represents 
tive day. They knew nothing of its representative 
character. howe\'er. and were commanded to keep 
it literally. But as observed literally by them, it 
represented two things. (1) The rest — the divine 
peace, that was our Lord's — into which He came, 
after His combats against and victories over the 
powers of darkness, for it was through spiritual 
states of labor that He subjugated hell and thus 
glorified His humanity. And when at last He had 
conquered the hells, His human nature was united 
to His divine nature. It became Jehovah on man's 
plane; and this was the Lord's peace. The Jewish 
sabbath represented this state of eternal divine 
human peace. (2) It represented, as we have seen, 
the peace of regeneration, which is only a finite form 
of the Lord's glorification — the peace of soul that 
comes when the days of labor are over and the sou] 



Pearls of Great Price 



83 



rests sweetly and confidently in the arms of the 
divine love. 

The very sanctity of the Jewish sabbath was 
derived from these two things which it represented. 
They were commanded to keep it holy because any 
violation of its laws would affect the heavens which 
rested upon it as a representative day. 

When the Lord came into the world and glorified 
His humanity — made it really the sabbath of peace 
to angels and to men, the Jewish sabbath ended; for 
in His fulfilment of the law He abolished representa- 
tions and established as realities the spiritual quali- 
ties they represented. 

THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH. 

The Lord rose from the tomb on the first day of 
the week, and thereafter Sunday was called the 
Lord's day, and immediately Sunday was set apart 
by the Apostles as a day for meeting, worship and 
the breaking of bread. But as yet Christianity had 
not assumed an organized form as a church apart 
from the forms of the Jewish religion. The Christian 
sabbath was^not legally established until the time of 
Constantine. Then among Christians, Sunday be- 
came their sabbath. The old sabbath passed away, 
and because all that it spiritually stood for had been 
fulfilled in the Glorified Saviour, it was abolished as 
a representative day. The Christian sabbath is not a 
representative day, and yet under the new Christian 



84 



Pearls of Great Price 



dispensation it serves a high spiritual purpose and 
fills a wonderful place in the culture of the spiritual 
life. The church brings to us very definite teaching 
on this subject: and the making of this teaching 
known and obedience to it is really a restoration of 
the christian sabbath. For instance, to put the 
teaching in the exact language of the church 
writings: ''But when the Lord came into the world, 
and the representations of Him therefore ceased, 
that day became a day of instruction in divine 
things, and thus also a day of rest from labor, and of 
meditation on such things as relate to salvation and 
eternal life, also a day of love toward the neighbor/' 
Here we have, in the New Church, the Christian 
sabbath restored. The old Puritan sabbath is gone; 
but there comes to take its place the Apostolic 
sabbath made rational by the revelation of genuine 
doctrine as to its purpose and use. 

THE USES OF THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH. 

(1) It is a day of instruction in spiritual things. 
For six days men have labored for the meat that 
perisheth — for the things of worldly bodily life. 
Their natural minds, which are on a level with the 
world, have been active. This is all according to 
order. "Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy 
work." This is a divine command. Each one must 
serve a use; for an idle man cannot be regenerated. 
He furnishes no plane of co-operation with the Lord. 



Pearls of Great Price 



85 



A man is regenerated in the performance of his use. 
But when Sunday comes, if a man i§ really a Chris- 
tian, he will drop the world and its interest for that 
day; and ascending into his higher or spiritual mind, 
which is created on a level with heaven, will seek 
instruction in divine things. This means that he 
will go to church, at least to the morning service, 
that he may get away from the pull and stress of 
earthly things and come into the atmosphere of the 
divine realities of life. 

The New churchman who deliberately breaks 
this new commandment — this law of the new chris- 
tian sabbath, and does the pleasure of his natural 
mind is guilty of a great sin against God. To live 
aright we must be instructed in divine things. The 
church provides that instruction and gives it with 
divine authority. It is an instruction that comes 
from the open Word of God. So that all who belong 
to the church — who profess faith in the Lord's 
Second Coming, are divinely obligated to attend 
the instruction of the church. (2) It is a day of rest 
from labor. This does not mean that it is a day for 
recreation. While far from being dogmatic, the 
church does lay down the law plainly. There may be 
works of necessity; but for a christian to ignore the 
day of rest from labor — for him to keep on every 
day of the week living in his earthly mind, is to 
shut out the light of heaven from his higher mind. 
It may be said: "AH work is worship." That is 



86 



Pearls 



of Great Price 



true; for the six days preceding the sabbath furnish 
the Christian man opportunities for illustrating and 
enforcing the doctrine that "all religion has relation 
to life;" but even so, it does not do away with the 
fact of his profound obligation to meet his brethren 
in a common worship of the Lord and with them 
receive instruction in divine things; and he can't do 
this unless he drops for that day the things that 
draws the mind away from heavenly contempla- 
tions. (3) It is a day of meditation on such things as 
relate to salvation. How we all forget this duty of 
meditation! How few of us stop long enough to do 
any serious thinking! But here is the opportunity 
furnished in the dawn of the Christian sabbath. It 
is a day on which to think about, fix in our minds 
and be grateful for the blessed doctrines of the 
Lord's New Church. We have often said that the 
reason many of our New Church people find it 
difficult to state the doctrines of the church is that 
they do not meditate on them. We must know a 
doctrine in order to think about it, and w T e must 
think about it in order to state it. And the subject of 
meditation is the things of eternal life and salvation. 
That is what every doctrine of the church stands 
for. (4) It is a day of love toward the neighbor. 
There are a great many people who are shut in, 
who for various reasons over w T hich they have no 
control, are deprived of association with their broth- 
ers and sisters in the worship of the church. Sunday 



Pearls of Great Price 87 



afternoons afford us opportunities of visiting them 
— of manifestations of real neighborly love toward 
them and this irrespective of their church affilia- 
tions. These are the uses of the christian sabbath. 

The New Church is here to make these uses clear 
— to make us feel our spiritual obligations to the 
Lord, the church and the world. It comes, not as a 
theological club, but as the Lord's Church to bring 
His message of eternal life to the world — to restore 
— to rebuild — to open the book of the Lord and from 
its internal sense enforce the laws of the Christian 
sabbath. 



XI 

THE ADVENT OF THE MESSIAH. 
Matthew ii. 1-12 



Revolving centuries, burdened with the great 
question of man's redemption, had brought the 
world into a state of deep expectancy. For from the 
date of man's fall, from the innocent state in which 
he was created, there had existed the hope and the 
belief that a great Deliverer would come bringing 
salvation with Him. This belief was based upon the 
promise made in Eden: "The seed of the woman 
shall bruise the head of the serpent. " This promise 
lingered in revelation and was preserved in all the 
ancient mythologies. And now the set time for the 
fulfilment of this promise was at hand. The world 
felt the movement that was stirring the very heart 
of the heavens; and deep mysterious unrest was 
taking hold of the world. In the Jewish Church 
whose scriptures had gradually unfolded the Edenic 
promise, this mysterious movement of life was 
stirring the minds of the doctors of the law, and 
they were pondering over the prophecies, for they 
felt that something unusual was about to happen. 

This feeling was not confined to the Jewish 
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Pearls of Great Price 



89 



Church. The Gentile world was also feeling the stir 
of the new life. People distant from Canaan and 
with no direct knowledge to guide them, such as 
revelation, had indirect information concerning the 
coming of a King who was to be born for the 
redemption of the world. This is evident from the 
story of the wise men who came from the east to the 
cradle of the Lord. They were the remnant of a 
yery ancient religious people who retained a knowl- 
edge which had come down to them from the most 
ancient time of Eden. Among them there lingered 
some knowledge of the divine symbolism of that 
ancient time. They were of a line of ancient seers 
and possessed the gift of seership. 

Balaam, fourteen hundred years before the wise 
men set out on their journey, had uttered this 
remarkable prophecy: "I shall see Him, but not 
now. I shall behold Him, but* not nigh. There shall 
come a star out of Jacob and a sceptre shall arise out 
of Israel." 

Balaam was of the same country as the wise men 
and of the same priestly line. He was a seer. 

The prophecy had been orally handed down 
from generation to generation. The wise men 
knew that when the long promised King made His 
advent a star would appear in the east. They were 
looking for it; and when they saw it they knew that 
the land of Israel had witnessed the birth of the long 
promised King. 



90 



Pearls of Great Price 



THE STAR IN THE EAST. 

This star — was it a star in the natural heavens? 
The astronomical records tell of no such phenome- 
non occurring at that time. Certainly if such a 
thing as a brilliant natural star coursing its way 
through the sky had ever happened literally some 
record would have been made of it in the annals of 
history. How is the believer in divine revelation to 
met this criticism of science? Shall we surrender the 
Christian revelation to the mere dictum of science? 
Shall the church abandon faith in the star of the 
east? No. Far from that. The Lord's New Chris- 
tian Church approaches this story from the spiritual 
side. The wise men being seers, their inner eyes were 
opened, and the star they saw while a real star, yet 
it belonged to the sky of the spiritual world. It was 
a supernatural phenomenon. It was of the same 
nature and substance as the bright light the 
shepherds saw on the night of the Lord's birth. 

The star of the east was an angelic society made^ 
visible as a star to guide the wise men to the Saviour 
of the world. 

In that wonderful intermediate world of spirits, 
when the eyes are lifted heavenward, the angelic 
societies appear like the stars that shine in our sky. 
It was such a star that shone for the wise men. 



Pearls of Great Price 91 

WHY THE WISE MEN SAW THE STAR. 

The sun is the symbol of divine love; the moon is 
the symbol of the divine truth, but the stars are 
symbols of spiritual knowledge. A star then stands 
for the knowledge of the Lord that has come down 
from the past. The shepherds did not see the star. 
There shone a bright light for them. They were not 
Gentiles. They knew directly the promise of the 
Old Testament. They were instructed directly by a 
divine revelation. But the wise men came from a 
land distant from the church. Their knowledge of 
the Lord's coming had descended to them in an 
indirect way from the dim past. 

The promise of a Redeemer made in Eden had 
been handed down from age to age among the 
Gentiles. It lingered in the race-memory of the 
people of the east. It was a knowledge from long 
ago; and the star was the symbol of it. That is why 
they were led by a star. 

THE COURSE OF THE STAR. 

The star of the east led the wise men, first to 
Jerusalem. Jerusalem stands for the church. The 
church, especially the church as to its doctrine, is 
the spiritual Jerusalem. When the Lord would 
picture to us the blessed doctrines of His New 
Church He did it by showing St. John the Holy City 
New Jerusalem descending from heaven. So the 



92 



Pearls of Great Price 



star led the wise men to Jerusalem to symbolize the 
fact that while the Gentiles have traditional knowl- 
edge still they must come to the church for instruc- 
tion from the Word. 

But the meaning of the star leading the wise men 
to Jerusalem includes us and our children. We may 
have been born of parents who are of the church, 
and from them learned many things, but we can no 
more inherit the divine doctrine of the church than 
we can its life. We must all be taught. And so there 
must be a visible church with God's word in it, and 
a valid ministry ordained and set apart to teach the 
faith of the church from the Word, as the priests of 
old opened the scripture and informed the wise men 
where Christ was to be born. 

This is the mission of the New T Church. It has 
come to teach the Gentiles — those who, have a rem- 
nant of affection for truth — to teach them from the 
Word, the higher and broader idea of God, the 
deeper meaning of the Lord's word, the clearer 
conception of the life after death and the laws of the 
Lord's divine providence. 

The age of mere priestly authority is a thing of 
the past. The age of rational thinking has dawned; 
and if the church is to guide the spiritual life of men, 
it must be able to teach them rational ideas of God, 
the Bible, and life. This does not mean that the 
church is to resolve itself into a theological club for 
the teaching of mere doctrine alone; but the church 



Pearls of Great Price 93 



must teach doctrine as the means of attaining the 
life that is not of this world. The star must lead to 
Jerusalem. 

THE STAR MOVING ON TO BETHLEHEM. 

After the wise men had received instruction from 
the Word in the city of Jerusalem, the star moved 
on to the city of Bethlehem and stood over the 
house where the young child was. Bethlehem 
means " House of Bread." The city of Jerusalem, 
as we have seen, is the symbol of the church as to 
its doctrinal or teaching function. Bethlehem is 
the church feeding the heart — breaking to men the 
bread of life. Doctrine is for the sake of life. Truth 
leads to good. 

If the wise men had remained in Jerusalem satis- 
find merely with the information they had gained 
concerning the Lord's birth-place, they never would 
have found the Christ. To really find Him they 
must follow the star to Bethlehem. People do not 
fled the Lord in a mere doctrine about Him. The 
star must lead farther on — lead to Him in His open 
Word — to Him in the life of good — to Him as the 
incarnate God — the House of Bread. 

THE GIFTS OF THE WISE MEN. 

The gifts of the wise men were gold, frankincense 
and myrrh. In these gifts the wise/men showed that 
they still retained some knowledge of the law of coV- 



94 



Peaels of Great Price 



responclence. For these gifts symbolized the 
heart's offering to the Lord. 

Gold, because it is the highest and most costly 
metal, stands for love — especially for the heart's 
love of the Lord. This is the gold we may offer to 
Him. And to give Him this love is to acknowledge 
Him as the source of life — the one from whom every 
good thing comes. It is to feel that apart from 
Him, life becomes self-centered and evil. It is to 
look up to Him and give Him freely the deepest and 
best that is in us, shunning, as sin against Him, 
everything that would take the heart away from 
Him. When we do these things, we give gold to the 
Lord. 

Frankincense stands for the soul's faith in Him. 
When we believe that He is the true God and 
eternal life; when we put our own self-derived intel- 
ligence aside and accept Him as the Lord and from 
His Word learn the truth, that makes spiritual intel- 
ligence; when we are willing to trust and follow Him 
in the regeneration — having clear faith in Him in 
His Divine Humanity and surrender our all to Him, 
we give Him frankincense. 

Myrrh stands for obedience — obedience to the 
commandments — obedience which has much of bit- 
terness in it to the natural man, but out of which in 
the end there comes a great joy. So, when we are 
willing to put aside our own will and learn to gladly 
do the Lord's will; when we are willing to put away 



Pearls of Great Price 95 



the selfish aim of life, and learn and walk in the 
Lord's way of life, daily denying ourselves — daily 
taking up our cross, we give myrrh to our Lord. 

Such are some of the lessons of the Christmas 
story. And if we strive to live them, a new life will 
come to us; for then the Christ will be born in our 
hearts and fill our lives with unspeakable joy. 



JOHN PREPARES THE WAY FOR JESUS. 
St. Mark i. 1-11. 



All great events in the history of the world have 
had the way prepared for them; for the natural 
world is only the theatre on which spiritual causes, 
resident and operative in the spiritual world, mani- 
fest themselves. The Incarnation of God in the 
person of the Lord Jesus Christ was the most 
stupendous event that ever occurred in the history 
of the world; and the world underwent a long series 
of preparations for it. 

When the fulness of time came, John the baptist 
was sent to prepare the Lord's way. He came in 
direct and literal fulfilment of prophecy. St. Mark 
points this out clearly. He says: "As it is written in 
the prophets — Behold I send my Messenger before 
thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee." 
He came — this John, as "the voice of one crying in 
the wilderness. Prepare ye the way of the Lord, 
make His paths straight." The last of the prophets 
of the Old Covenant concludes his prophecy by say- 
ing: "Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet 
before the coming of the great and dreadful day of 
the Lord; and he shall turn the hearts of the fathers 

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Pearls of Great Price 97 



to the children, and the hearts of the children to 
their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a 
curse. " 

John the baptist was this Elijah, not that he was 
a reincarnation of that prophet , but that he came in , 
the spirit that characterized Elijah's work. He pre- 
pared the way for the Lord's coming among the 
people by the baptism of repentance which be 
admins terecl in the River Jordan. This work was 
necessary. Unless it had been clone, the Lord's 
coming would have smitten the whole Jewish 
nation, yea, the whole race of mankind, with a 
curse. 

The Jewish church was the representative of a 
church. It was connected with heaven by its corre- 
spondential and representative ritual and ceremony. 
The point of contact was thus with their acts of 
worship, not with their hearts and lives. 

John's baptism with water was representative. It 
connected with heaven. It was the last link in the 
chain of representations. So that if it had not been 
supplied, the Lord could not have come without 
smitting the earth with a curse. All divine opera- 
tions must be veiled and accommodated to man's 
reception. This is the whole significance of the 
Jewish ritual. Heaven rested upon it. It was a stay 
or support. So John's baptism was the last stay. 
If it had not been provided all connection with 
heaven would have been broken, and the inrushing 



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hell would have effected complete and universal 
ruin. This was why John came baptizing with water 
unto repentance. 

THE REPRESENTATIVE CHARACTER OF JOHN. 

John came as the representative of the written 
Word. The Bible is the Word which in the begin- 
ning was with God and was God, but in the Bible 
this Word is written and expressed in the terms of 
human language. Inmostly, it is the Word that in 
the beginning was with God. The Word is what 
reveals God; it is God in revelation. 

The Most Ancient people, called Adam, in the 
divine allegory of Genesis, did not possess a written 
Word} nevertheless, the Word came to them and 
was the source of revelation to them. In the Most 
Ancient people the will and the understanding were 
united. Good from the Lord flowed into their will, 
and passing directly into their understanding, was 
intellect ualized as the truth to guide them. The 
Word was thus in them; and nature was to them 
its letter. In the Ancient church, the intellectual 
part of the mind was separate from the will, which 
had become evil, and was made capable of an ele- 
vation above the will and of receiving guidance 
from outward revelation. The Ancient Word was 
then given. It was written in symbols within 
which was contained the Word, and by the study 
of which light flowed into their understanding to 



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guide them, and from which the Lord formed in 
them a new will above and separate from the old 
will. This new will was formed in the intellectual 
part of their mind. 

Falling dow^n to the natural plane of the mind, 
and no longer capable of being reached and guided 
by the Ancient Word, the Lord raised up the Jewish 
representative of a church, and gave the Word on a 
still lower plane. He descended and clothed it in 
the forms in which we find it in the 
Old Testament. It is the written Word— the 
Word expressed on the plane of the Jewish mind, 
within which lies concealed the essential Word of 
God which in the beginning was with Him and was 
Himself. 

John represented this written Word. 

CHRIST THE INCARNATE WORD. 

The Lord Christ came into the world as the Word. 
"The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." 
Just as the written Word had descended to man's 
plane by being clothed in accommodation to his 
state, so when man passed out of the sphere of the 
word that had been written, then that same word — 
the eternal logos, descended, but not separated from 
the Divine Good, and made its advent by an actual 
incarnation in the person of our Lord. He was the 
Word made flesh — the Word in human form. 



100 Pearls of Great Price 



John preparing the way for the Lord is the symbol 
of the written Word preparing the way for the com- 
ing of the Lord as the Incarnate Word, for the writ- 
ten Word is the means by which human minds are 
prepared to receive the Lord as the eternal Word. 

There is only one Word of God ; and the one Word 
which was from the beginning, is written in the 
Bible, but incarnate in Jesus Christ. The written 
Word, like John, goes before to prepare the way. 
For no one can receive the Lord as the Word made 
flesh — receive Him intelligently in His Divine 
Humanity, unless he first receives the written Word 
as a divine revelation. What men think of the 
Bible is also what they think of the Lord. If they 
regard the Bible as a venerable literature, as the 
record of the evolution of the divine idea — the story 
of the growth of the mind into the monotheistic 
conception of God, and not as a divine revelation of 
God to man, as a consequence, they come to think 
of the Lord as the one who gathered into His person 
and exemplified in His life, the very highest and 
best human qualities. Rejecting the divinity of 
the Revealed Word in the scripture, men, at the 
same time, reject the divinity of Him who came as 
the Word in human form. 

If men accept the Bible as divine, but cling to a 
literal interpretation of it, they, because of that 
kind of reception of the written Word, will regard 
Christ as divine in the sense of accepting Him as the 



Pearls of Great Price 101 



second person in a trinity of divine persons. If they 
accept the Bible as God's Word because in addition 
to its holy letter, it contains a spiritual sense which 
treats of the Lord and the process by which He was 
glorified, they will, through that concept of it, be 
brought to see that Jesus Christ in His Divine 
Humanity is the Jehovah of the Old Testament, 
incarnate, the one and only God of heaven and 
earth, in whom is the Father and from whom is the 
Holy Spirit. 

And it is the written Word, thought of and 
received in this way, that prepares the way for the 
Lord's coming as the true God and eternal life. The 
doctrine of the Incarnate Word — the Divine Hu- 
manity, cannot be taught and received as a truth 
apart from the written Word. John, the written 
Word, must go before and prepare the way for the 
coming of the Word made flesh. 

JOHN'S BAPTISM OF REPENTANCE. 

John's baptism prepared the way for the Lord to 
come and baptize with the spirit and with fire from 
heaven. The River Jordan was one of the bound- 
aries of the land of Canaan; and John baptizing in 
the Jordan had a distinct significance. His baptism 
was the baptism of repentance for the remission of 
sins. It symbolized the cleansing and reformation 
of the external mind by means of the literal truths 
of the Word. This work of purification prepares 



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men for the Lord's coming into their hearts. We 
must all reach the life and power of the Divine 
Humanity through the baptism of repentance and 
real reformation of life. There is no other way. 
Repentance from evil ways is the beginning of the 
church with man. It is the actual conversion of the 
mind from a downward to an upward spiritual 
course of life. And the very essence of genuine 
repentance is to shun evils — the evils forbidden in 
the ten commandments, because they are sins 
against God. For without a consciousness of sin 
there can be no repentance. Worldly influences may 
restrain a man from committing evil, but they can 
never lead to genuine repentance. This is possible 
only with the man who acknowledges that evil is 
sin against God. 

This work must be done honestly and faithfully if 
one would have the sweet and tender life of the 
Incarnate Word come in and dwell in his heart . One 
must be baptized with water — one must apply to 
his life the precepts and commands of the letter of 
the Word, and thus wash himself and make him- 
self clean in his affection, thought, and deed, if one 
would have come into one's soul the Holy spirit of 
the Incarnate Word and the fire of the divine love. 

THE BAPTISM OF OUR LORD. 

The Lord came to John's baptism, not because 
He needed to do the work of repentance, but in 



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order that He might fulfil all righteousness. Our 
Lord's human — the human He took upon Himself 
through the virgin Mary, was not exempt from the 
taint of hereditary evil. He took our nature upon 
Him — our nature just as it was. It involved, in 
hereditary forms, the evils of the fallen race. Had 
He taken upon Himself an immaculate humanity, 
He never could have met and overcome, by subjuga- 
tion, the spiritual enemies who had drawn mankind 
down to their level and into spiritual captivity. 
"He was born of the seed of Abraham after the 
flesh/' Redemption consisted in the Lord meeting 
the hells on their own plane, and by admitting their 
temptations into His maternal human, overcoming 
them and thus reducing the hells to order. 

These assaults — these combats, were the means 
by which He glorified His Humanity — by which He 
united it to the Divinity within Him, thus making- 
it a Divine Humanity. 

Therefore John's baptism, in relation to the Lord, 
represented the purification of the human He took 
from the Jewish race — its divine glorification, and 
consequent union with His Divine Nature. This 
was why Jesus came to John's baptism. It symbol- 
ized the process of His glorification — the putting off 
of the human from Mary and the putting on of the 
human from the Father, by which He became in 
Hi§ Humanity, the Son of the living God. 



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THE OPEN HEAVEN AND THE DESCENT OF THE 
SPIRIT. 

The open heaven and the descent of the spirit like 
a dove were, of course, spiritual phenomena; but the 
open heaven was the symbol of the opening of the 
Lord's internal mind to the inflowing divine life as 
it came in and down in glorifying measures to dwell 
in Him as the well beloved Son of the High- 
est. For the Son of God is not a divine person dis- 
tinct from God the Father, but is the Divine Human 
organism in which God dwells and through which 
the divine life is functioned to angels and to men. 

The spirit like a dove descending upon the Lord 
was the symbol of the sweet and gentle life of the 
divine love and wisdom that came to Him as He 
opened His inner mind upward to the Father, the 
Divinity of which He was begotten, and this Holy 
spirit He now breathes forth from Himself upon all 
who take up His cross and follow Him in the 
regeneration. 

Prayer. 

The day returns and brings us the petty round of 
irritating concerns and duties. Help us to play the 
man; help us to perform them with laughter and 
kind faces; let cheerfulness abound with industry. 
Give us to go blithely on our business all this day; 
bring us to our resting beds weary and content and 
undishonoured ; and grant us in the end the gift of 
sleep. Amen. Robert Louis Stevenson. 



XIII 



JESUS BEGINS HIS WORK 
St. Mark i. 12-20 



Immediately after our Lord was baptized, He 
entered the wilderness where He underwent the 
three temptations recorded by St. Matthew. The 
temptation in the wilderness was not our Lord's 
first experience of temptation, for from the begin- 
ning of His earthly life there had been awful com- 
bats with the evil powers and continual victory over 
them. But the process of glorification which went 
on in our Lord from His childhood to His baptism 
by John, were operative in His internal mind. This 
was according to the divine law governing all spirit- 
ual progress. The internal is first regenerated, and 
the Lord in His glorification experienced this. His 
glorification was the infinite regeneration of His 
humanity. This work of glorification which went on 
in the Lord's internal man during the years of which 
we have no record, because it did not belong to the 
outward and historical sense of the Word, had 
reached a development where it could be brought 
more fully into the external planes of His human 
mind. 



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When this state came to our Lord, He went down 
to the Jordan and was baptized, and then entered 
the wilderness and endured the temptations, re- 
corded in the gospels. He then entered upon His 
public ministry; for now the experiences He was to 
undergo were of a nature to be recorded in the 
letter of the gospels. 

One thing in passing, however, should be said, 
and that is, that those interior processes of glorifi- 
cation which went on in the internal mind of the 
Lord's human during the thirty years that are 
passed over in comparative silence by the four 
Evangelists, are most minutely portrayed in the 
internal sense of the biographies of Abraham, Isaac, 
and Jacob. For those three patriarchs are types of 
the Lord's humanity in its three discrete planes of 
life. 

JESUS BEGINS HIS MINISTRY IN GALILEE. 

"Galilee of the Gentiles!" When an old dispensa- 
tion of the church is judged and brought to its end 
the Lord immediately begins to raise up a new 
church; and the new church which arises always 
begins with the Gentiles. It was to symbolize this 
that our Lord began His public ministry in Galilee, 
which at that time, was composed largely of a 
Gentile population. 

The nucleus of a new church is formed of the rem- 
nant of good and sincere members of the old church. 



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107 



They form the centre of the new movement, but 
the new church itself is formed among the Gentiles. 
This doctrine finds ample illustration in the estab- 
lishment of the Christian Church, which was the ne w 
church which succeeded the Jewish representative 
of a church. 

The Jewish Church rejected and crucified the 
Lord. This it did outwardly because inwardly it had 
long before rejected the divine truth of the written 
Word, which became incarnate in the person of our 
Lord. And so, beginning with the small remnant 
left in the Jewish Church as a nucleus, the Lord 
planted His Christian Church among the Gentile 
nations of the world. As He went naturally to 
Galilee to begin His ministry, so He went spiritually 
to a spiritual Galilee to found and raise up His 
church. 

This was true of His first coming and of the estab- 
lishment of the first Christian Church; and it is 
equally true of His second coming in the Word, and 
of the establishment of the new Christian Church. 
The New Church of our day commenced with the 
remnant left in the first Christian Church. They 
formed the nucleus. But our Lord's new and blessed 
ministry — His proclamation of the new evangel, and 
establishment of the new Christian Church — all 
these gracious things begin in a spiritual Galilee — 
among those who are spiritually in Gentile states of 
life — who, notwithstanding their errors, ignorances, 



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and even sins, are deep down in their hearts, in the 
affection of spiritual truth. 

THE CALL TO REPENTANCE. 

''Metanoia." This is a Greek word; and literally 
it means change of mind. Metanoia — this was the 
word used by John the Baptist as the herald of our 
Lord, and it was the first utterance of our Lord in 
announcing the presence of the kingdom of God. It 
is rendered repent in the New Testament. "The 
time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand, 
change ye your mind and believe the gospel." This 
is literally what our Lord said. The Jewish dispen- 
sation was at its end, a new spiritual order was com- 
ing in, and the people were exhorted to change their 
minds and believe the gospel of the new kingdom 
which was not of this world. This is the broad 
significance of the Metanoia. 

But there was something deeper. The new church, 
which our Lord was establishing, was a spiritual 
order. It was not something apart from men, but 
something to be established in them. And this 
could be done only through that change of mind 
which involved the implantation of spiritual princi- 
ples in their lives by their turning away from the 
wrong things of life. And so our English word 
repent, when it is is understood, expresses very 
nearly all that is involved in the Greek word 
Metanoia. The change is not merely a change of 



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109 



intellectual attitude. It is, of course, that, but it is 
a great deal more. It is a change in the very life and 
substance of the natural mind — in its loves and 
thoughts, and the reception, from the Lord, of 
higher loves and thoughts — the actual "putting off 
of the old man with his deeds and the putting on of 
the new man who is renewed in knowledge after the 
image of Him who created him." This is actual 
repentance. 

"Repentance of the mouth and not of the life is 
not repentance; and sins are not remitted by means 
of repentance of the mouth, but by repentance of 
the life." Contrition — mere sorrow on account of 
sin, is not repentance. Repentance is feeling sorry 
enough to quit. So it is that repentance is the first 
thing of the church with man. "Repent ye and 
believe the gospel," 

This is the portal through which men must enter 
into the kingdom of God. The Apostles and the 
distinctly apostolic age knew no other way of 
entrance. "Repentance toward God and faith in 
our Lord Jesus Christ" — that was the gospel of the 
early Christian church. But amid the trinitarian 
and Christological controversies of the early Chris- 
tian centuries, this doctrine was lost sight of. The 
Roman church did away with it by its doctrine of 
penance and the Reformed church by its doctrine of 
faith alone. 

The New Church restores repentance to its right- 



110 Pearls of Great Price 



ful place in the Christian system. It is before every- 
thing else. It is not believe and then repent. It is 
repent and believe the gospel. 

JESUS CALLING HIS DISCIPLES. 

The calling of the disciples was an interesting 
thing in itself. They were to be our Lord's com- 
panions — to share His life and labors. But aside 
from this, there was a deeper significance to it. The 
twelve disciples were not only individuals, but they 
were representative of all the good and true things 
of the church. Their names were inscribed on the 
foundations of the Holy City. They sustained, in 
their representative character, the same relation to 
the new spiritual order inaugurated by Christianity 
that the twelve sons of Jacob did in the Jewish 
dispensation. 

The lesson for today tells us of the call of Simon 
Peter and Andrew, his brother — of James and John, 
his brother, four in all. Peter, the first disciple 
chosen, and who became the spokesman among the 
disciples, stands for the principle of faith. Faith is 
the first grace that finds place in the regenerating 
mind. But faith, as it is defined in the doctrine of 
the church, is not a mere intellectual belief. It is 
belief grounded in good. Understood in this way, we 
can all see what the apostle means where he says: 
u Without faith it is impossible to please God." Be- 
cause Peter represented the faith that is of good- 



Pearls of Great Price 111 



ness, the Lord gave to him the keys of the kingdom ; 
for faith is belief in the truth — that which uses the 
truth, to open the kingdom of heaven to the soul. 

Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, stands for faith 
brought forth and manifested in the life — for the 
faith of obedience. The calling of these two disciples 
stands for the incorporation of the principles of 
faith and obedience in the mind of the church as a 
body and in the mind of the man of the church. 
Peter is not called alone. Faith in the intellect is not 
enough. It will not ensure one's salvation. Andrew 
must be called along with Peter. He, as Peter's 
natural brother, stands for faith in the will — for the 
principle that leads one from the sight of truth to 
the daily practice of it. And this faith in the will — 
doing the things the Lord commands, is spiritually 
the brother of the faith that shines clearly in the 
understanding. 

The calling of James and John, thought of spirit- 
ually, indicates a progression of the spiritual life 
from what is external to w T hat is deeper. Peter and 
Andrew stand for the early states of regeneration in 
which the understanding, seeing the truth, leads and 
impels the will to obedience. This is a necessity in 
the beginning; for then faith or truth, is first as to 
time. But a more interior and blessed state awaits 
the faithful soul — a state in which the will is re- 
newed by the divine grace — in which the will of 
good becomes dominant, and no longer needs to 



112 Pearls of Great Price 



consult truth in the understanding. Here we reach 
James and John; for thought of in this spiritual way, 
James types to us the heavenly principle of love to 
the neighbor, and John the beautiful and spontane- 
ous flowing forth of love into daily deed. Reaching 
this state, the purpose of good in the heart brings 
immediately into requisition every faculty in its 
execution. This is the higher state of regeneration 
for which the calling of James and John stands. 

Now, this spiritual conception of this story takes 
it out of all that is local and translates it into the 
experience of the regenerating man. How utterly 
trivial all the cavilling of the rationalizing critics 
appears in the light of the spiritual sense of the 
gospel! Seen in this light, human regeneration is 
simply the Christ living over again His life in the 
life of all who repent and believe the gospel. 



XIV 

JESUS AT WORK. 
St. Mark i. 21-45. 



The Lord said : "My Father worketh hitherto and 
I work." He also said: "Tihe Son of Man came not 
to be ministered unto, but to minister. " The Lord's 
ministry was an unselfish ministry. u He went about 
doing good." It was all so simple and beautiful. It 
was free from everything of self. From infancy to 
manhood, He had been growing into the conscious- 
ness of the divine love which was His inmost life. 
The life which in Him was to become the light of 
men. This inmost love of saving was the Father in 
Him. It came in and knocked at the doors of the 
Lord's human mind for entrance into the world of 
human feeling and thought. As it came down its 
presence stirred into opposition to it all that was of 
the heredity which belonged to Him as the son of 
Mary; and He underwent internal temptations that 
were dire and dreadful. But in every instance the 
lower life — the things of His heredity, were quelled 
and put ojf; and as this was done, the divine life, 
which dwelt incarnate in Him, descended, forming 

113 



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in its descent, the Divine human through which He 
functions the infinite life to angels and to men. 

What a wonderful process this was! Nothing 
could be known about it until the internal sense of 
the Word was opened; for that sense alone reveals 
it. The First Coming is fully understood only in the 
light of the Second Coming. In fact the Second 
Coming is the explanation of the First Coming. The 
glorification of the Lord's humanity, proceeding as 
it did, from what was internal down and out to 
what was external, He was now ready to begin His 
ministry of healing and deliverance. This ministry 
can never be understood until we grasp the truth 
that our Lord lived consciously in both worlds. 
What He did in this w^orld was an effect flowing from 
causes operative in the inner spiritual w T orld. There 
was therefore a perfect correspondence between 
what He did for men's physical bodies during His 
earthly life, and what He did for human souls in the 
world of spirits^ or to put it differently, what He 
did in the cure and deliverance of souls in the world 
of spirits, flowed down as an operating cause and 
was ultimated in the cures and deliverances received 
in the gospel. His miracles on the physical plane 
were effects of spiritual miracles wrought on the 
spiritual plane and in the inner world. . 

Not only that ; but what He did on the natural 
plane corresponds to what He now, in His Divine 
Humanity, does in human minds. This means that 



Pearls of Great Price 



115 



bur Lord does not belong to a past age, What He 
did He does — does now, in a spiritual way, in all who 
in simple faith look to Him and do His command- 
ments. 

This concept takes the Lord and His ministry out 
of all that is local and racial. The ministry in Pales- 
tine becomes only the picture of a higher ministry to 
all mankind. This thought of our Lord's ministry 
opens to the mind the wonderful present-day sig- 
nificance of the miracles we are to consider in this 
lesson. 

THE MAN WITH AN UNCLEAN SPIRIT. 

In the song of Zacharias, the purpose of the Lord's 
coming in the flesh is declared to be salvation from 
enemies: "That we should be saved from our 
enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us." 
Mankind had fallen into the hands of the evil 
powers. In the beginnings of man's fall, and on 
throughout the history of his spiritual decline, the 
Lord had been able to hold the evil world in subjec- 
tion through an angelic humanity; but when man 
fell below the reach of the heavens, the divine sphere 
of the Lord flowing through the heavens was no 
longer able to hold back the infernal crew; and we 
are told that the inhabitants of hell "issued forth 
out of their hells." They ascended into the inter- 
mediate world of spirits, and there gained control of 
the human souls in that plane of life and even we&t 



116 Pearls of Great Price 



so far as to infest and threaten the destruction of the 
lower heavens. Not only that, but they possessed 
the minds of men on earth and had begun to obsess 
their very bodies. In this way they would have 
destroyed the human race, but for the Lord's com- 
ing by the assumption of a human nature through 
which He could reach and subjugate them. This 
was the supreme reason for the Lord's coming. The 
unclean spirit mentioned in this lesson was a subject 
infernal — a sensual devil, through whom a whole 
society of sensual infernals operated. And the man 
with the unclean spirit was one whose freedom had 
been overridden and whose body was obsessed. He 
pictures to us a condition that would have become 
universal if the Lord had not come with power to 
judge and overthrow the evil powers. He did come. 
In our own human nature He drew near to the 
infesting and obsessing devils and by centering His 
divine sphere upon them in a way that did not con- 
sume them, broke their power over man and re- 
manded them to their hells in which they were held 
in utter subjection to His Divine Humanity. 

This was redemption. The evil spirits knew who 
He was. They knew the purpose of His coming. 
"Art thou come hither to destroy us? I know thee 
who thou art." The deliverance of this man was and 
is a picture of the Lord's deliverance of the human 
race from the destructive forces of the evil world. 
The man thus delivered, came into a state of free- 



Pearls of Great Price 117 



dorn and reason, and pictures to us the restoration 
of spiritual freedom and reason to the human race 
through the Lord's subjugation of the hells. Seen 
in this light what a divine work redemption was! 
We see that it was wrought in the spiritual world 
and that its effects were and are manifested in this 
world. But the Lord's work of redemption, while 
universal, must be made or become individual, 
Personal regeneration is the individual realization 
of redemption. The Lord casts the unclean spirit of 
self-love out of the man who really looks to Him. 
He has all power. He has conquered hell on man's 
behalf; and no unclean spirit can withstand the 
power of His Word when once we open our hearts 
to its divine influence. 

THE CURE OF PETER'S WIFE'S MOTHER. 

Among the Lord's disciples, Peter stands forth as 
representative of the faith of the man of the church. 
But the faith for which St. Peter stands is not a 
mere blind assent to church dogmas? It is the mind's 
clear intellectual sight of the truth. And more than 
that, for one may clearly see the truth and not be 
influenced by it. Faith is seeing the truth and mak- 
ing it the governing principle of the life. It is a thing 
of life and not a thing of the mere intellect. Faith, 
understood in this sense, becomes a quality that is 
embraced by the affection of the heart. So that 
Simon Peter's wife stands for one's affection for the 



118 Pearls of Great Price 



faith that one holds. Nothing remains with one in 
the other life that has not joined to it as in a mar- 
riage, an affection which vitalizes and makes it a 
matter of one's heart. This affection for truth is 
what is denoted by St. Peter's wife. 

But what of Peter's wife's mother? She stands 
for the love from which one's affection for the truth 
or faith of the church springs. The reason why one 
loves the truth is Peter's wife's mother. She stands 
for the root love — for the love out of which comes 
the affection for truth. This love may be very 
selfish; and when it is, it is Peter's wife's mother 
sick with a fever. When this fever comes it sickens 
us. It burns within us. In order to be useful we 
must be cured of this fever. The Lord came and 
took the sick woman by the hand and lifted her up; 
and immediately the fever left her, and she minis- 
tered unto them. This was a miracle and revealed 
the Lord's power; but He works this miracle in all 
into whose mind He comes in the regenerating 
power of His truth. 

The sick woman's hand stands for that in our 
minds which the Lord can take hold of — for our 
ability to believe and receive His divine truth. It is 
by means of this ability that the Lord lifts us up; 
for in our fevered state, in our selfish reasons for 
loving the truth, what we need is lifting up. As 
long as this root love is natural it will remain 
fevered. It must be lifted up and made spiritual. 



Pearls of Great Price 119 

Only the Lord can lift it up; and when He does lift 
up this love, it begins to minister to all the princi- 
ples of the mind as Peter's wife's mother arose and 
ministered to all who were in the house. 

THE CURE OF THE LEPER. 

Leprosy was a most dreadful skin disease. The 
skin became dead. In the Bible it has a very dis- 
tinct spiritual meaning. It stands for profanation. 
There are many forms of profanation; but that form 
of it for which leprosy stands is the profession of 
religion without the possession of it. In such a case 
the man is what we call a hypocrite. His religion is 
an outward thing. It is dead because it has no con- 
nection with anything of internal love and acknowl- 
edgment. It is a mere dead skin. But the leprosy 
our Lord cured represented profanations which were 
largely due to ignorance — sins against *the Son of 
Man and not against the Holy Spirit. It is this state 
that is pictured to us in this leper who came kneeling 
down to the Lord in deep humility and in the ack- 
nowledgment of the Lord's power to heal him. How 
beautiful and tender the record is! How wonder- 
fully it reveals our Lord's love! " Jesus put forth 
His hand and touched him; and saith unto him, be 
thou clean." And the leprosy left him and he was 
clean. 

The Lord does the same thing for men today. 
Sins of ignorance do not condemn men. They may 



120 



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be morally disfigured and unclean ; yet if they come 
to our Lord, He always will have compassion on 
them. He will reach forth His hand, touch and heal 
them. This He does by teaching them the truth and 
the laws of His perfect order. The suddenness of the 
cures recorded in the gospel do not stand for 
instantaneous regeneration, but for the certainty of it 
in all who turn away from evil and false life to the 
life which the Lord teaches in His Word. 

How wonderful it all is! Our Lord is still with us. 
He is still going up and down the land, opening the 
eyes of the blind, unstopping the ears of the deaf, 
healing all manner of diseases and raising the dead 
to life. He is doing all these miracles on the 
spiritual plane. And to see the Lord and the four 
gospels in this light is to see the Son of Man coming 
in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 



They who are in heaven are continually advanc- 
ing to the spring-time of life, and the more thou- 
sands of years they live, the more delightful and 
happy is the spring to which they attain. — Sweden- 
borg, Heaven and Hell. 



XV 

JESUS FORGIVING SIN. 
St. Mark ii. 1-12. 



The Lord's ministry to the people of His day — 
to the bodies of men, was the outward form of His 
present divine ministry to human souls, in the heal- 
ing of the spiritual diseases to which the physical 
diseases He cured corresponded. This doctrine is 
the key that opens the door to a rational faith, not 
only in the fact of the miracles wrought by the 
Lord, but also to the spiritual meaning of them. 

He raised the dead; and that natural fact stands, 
in the gospel story, as the symbol of His power to 
raise up to a new life all who are dead in trespasses 
and sins. He restored natural sight to the blind; and 
in doing it, He symbolized His power to open blind 
understandings to the light and glory of the divine 
truth. He unstopped deaf ears; and in doing it He 
gave us the symbol of His divine operation in its 
touch upon the human will, enabling it to hear and 
to respond to the behest of His ^ord. He healed 
paralysis, enabling those whose limbs had been long 
palsied, to arise and walk; and as often as He did it, 
He set before men the image of a more interior oper- 

121 



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ation of His truth in the restoration of man's outer 
life to harmony and concordant action with his 
internal life of right motive and thought. 

How this conception of the Lord's ministry exalts 
and glorifies it ! All the power, majesty and grandeur 
of the literal gospel record of His miracles remain, 
but in this thought of them they are lifted to a 
higher plane and their purpose is explained. They 
become objects of thinking of the greater miracles 
He now works in the reformation and regeneration 
of human souls. And what is true of the miracles 
themselves, is true of Him by whose divine power 
they were wrought. He did not act once for all. He 
continues to do what He did; only now, He does it 
on the higher spiritual plane. He did not die and 
leave the world with a Pope as His viceregent. He 
founded His church. It is His mystic body, through 
which He, as the Living Head, might be eternally 
present with men in a divine ministry to their souls. 

In this thought all that is local drops away; and 
Christ glorified — Christ in His church, now restored 
to its ancient catholicity and apostolic power, is 
present to do for all human souls, the spiritual 
things that were symbolically set forth in His earthly 
ministry. And so, our vision is not turned back in 
efforts to catch a glimpse of the historic Christ, 
although He does belong to history, but our look is 
up, to Christ enthroned in the heavens, yet present 
in His body, the Church, sending forth through 



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123 



divinely ordained channels, the life that raises up 
dead souls, opens blind minds, quickens and em- 
powers weak wills and restores palsied lives. He is 
thus the living Lord, the personal incarnation of the 
Divine Love and Wisdom, acting both mediately 
and immediately, upon the souls of men. It is this 
ever-present omnipotent Jesus Christ, that we, as a 
church are sent forth to make known. 

Not only is this true, but the provinces of the 
Holy Land, in which He wrought His miracles, 
symbolize the different planes of the human mind in 
which today, He is working corresponding spiritual 
miracles. 

JUDEA, SAMARIA, GALILEE. 

These were natural localities, geographical divi- 
sions of Canaan. They are not without their dis- 
tinct spiritual signification. The mind is not a mere 
thinking faculty. It is a spiritual organism and is 
created in distinct planes. Does not the mind have a 
distinctly love plane? Does not the mind have a 
distinctly rational plane? Does not the mind have 
a distinct plane of action? Love, thought and action 
are distinct; they are clearly distinguishable one 
from the other. 

Now, these three planes of the spiritual mind, for 
Canaan, in the Bible symbology, stands for the 
spiritual mind, are symbolized in the gospel story, 
by the three provinces of Canaan. Judea stands for 



124 Pearls of Great Price 

the highest love plane, Samaria for the reasoning, or 
thought plane, and Galilee for the plane of action. 
The very moment we see this spiritual significance 
of the three provinces of Canaan, we understand 
why the Lord's ministry of healing was confined to 
Galilee. For Galilee in us is the natural plane of the 
mind — that province of our life that needs reforma- 
tion and regeneration. It is that part of us that 
touches and that comes into actual contact with the 
world. It is the plane on which we are blind and 
deaf and palsied. It is the plane down to which 
must be brought and lived, the love and the 
tought, the motive and the ideal, of the higher 
planes of the mind. How this thought of Galilee 
illumines all that is said about it in connection with 
the Lord's ministry! When the time for the begin- 
ning of miracles arrived, the Lord went to Cana of 
Galilee, and there turned the water into wine; when 
He would meet His disciples after His resurrection, 
it was on a mountain in Galilee that He manifested 
Himself to them. It all means that daily life — the 
plane of action, is where the Lord does His work of 
spiritual healing and uplift. We learn, we love that 
we may do. Religion is of the life. 

CAPERNAUM. 

The Bible cities stand for religious concepts ex- 
pressed in the form of Doctrine. We instinctively 
think of Jerusalem as the symbol, employed in the 



Pearls of Great Price 125 



Holy Scriptures, of the church in its capacity as 
teacher of the things that relate to God and heaven. 
That is why it is said: "The law shall go forth from 
Jerusalem." We recognize Babylon, especially the 
Babylon of the book of Revelation, the city over 
whose fall the angels rejoiced, as the symbol of 
the false teaching which defends the evil of 
loving to rule over the spiritual life of man. 
A city differs from houses scatered over the 
country. So a doctrine differs from isolated 
and unrelated truths. A doctrine is a system of 
truth. So of Capernaum, as used in this lesson, 
it stands for the simple teaching that makes 
religion a practical thing of life, for the teaching 
that shows us that religion is not a mere mood, not 
a mere sentiment, not a transcendentalism, but a 
life of love to God and of service to the neighbor. It 
is called "the Lord's own city." It is really "the 
Doctrine of the Lord" in its relation to life. 

Jesus Christ in Capernaum is the Lord in His 
Divine Humanity acknowledged as Lord of all; for 
this acknowledgment of Him builds Capernaum in 
our minds. It is His own city in the human mind. 
And for Him to come into it, is to have Him present 
in this doctrine, making it vital in life. 

THE PARALYTIC. 

There are two sets of nerves that run from their 
centres in the brain to all parts of the body. They 



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are the nerves of sensation and the nerves of motion. 
Paralysis is a disease which affects these nerves. It 
sometimes happens that only the sensory nerves are 
involved, and in such a case, the affected parts are 
capable of motion, but lose all sense of feeling. This 
is sensory paralysis. Then, it often happens that 
only the motor nerves are involved and in such a 
case there is feeling, but the power to move is want- 
ing. This is motor paralysis. Then again there are 
cases where both sets of nerves are involved. This 
is total paralysis. 

Now, these three kinds of natural paralysis 
picture to us three corresponding kinds of spiritual 
paralysis : 

(1) Sensory paralysis — the loss of feeling in the 
affected parts, represents that moral condition into 
which one ultimately comes by long indulgence in 
any particular sin. By continually committing sin 
one finally loses all sense of the sinfulness of sin. 
(2) Motor paralysis where the feeling is unimpaired, 
but the power of locomotion wanting, represents 
that state of soul where one sees and feels the sins of 
one's life and acknowledges them, but from long 
indulgence, or from heredity, or from environment, 
has no power in the external man to act against 
them. When he would do good evil is present with 
him. (3) Total paralysis in which both sets of 
nerves are affected, represents a state in which the 
internal or spiritual part of the man has lost all 



Pearls of Great Price 127 



control over the natural man. He is in a state of 
total spiritual paralysis. 

The Lord's power to save unto the uttermost all 
who come unto Him is pictured to us in His cure of 
the paralytic mentioned in this lesson. He said: 
"He that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast 
out." The Lord can awaken in man his lost moral 
sense. The Lord can bring the whole outwarel life 
into conformity with the inwardly cherished high 
ideal of right. The Lord can save the man who is 
lost, in the sense of having no control over his life. 
He can reach and save unto the uttermost. He had 
power to cure all forms of natural paralysis, so He 
is able to cure all forms of spiritual paralysis. 

The man of this lesson, helpless and despairing, 
stands for men and women who have lost their hold 
and despair of salvation, but who, in some way, feel 
and believe that there is life for them in Jesus 
Christ if only they knew how to get to Him. 

THE BED ON WHICH THE PARALYTIC WAS 
BROUGHT. 

The inward belief that such people have — a belief 
which they cannot clearly define to themselves, that 
Jesus Christ has power to save them if only the}^ 
knew how to reach Him, is symbolized by the bed 
in which the paralytic was brought to the Lord. 
The belief in the Lord's power to save from sin — 
the concept of Him which holds the mind open to 



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receive His help, is a spiritual bed. It may be, and 
often is, a bed of languishing; but it is written in the 
Psalms: "Thou wilt strengthen him on the bed of 
languishing. Thou wilt make all his bed in his 
sickness/' The thought of the Lord as Saviour, even 
though life may be cursed with sin, if back of the sin 
there is the desire for purity and freedom, is a bed on 
which all such may be carried into the Lord's 
presence. Blessed bed! 

THEY WHO BROUGHT THE PARALYTIC. 

In St. Matthew we are told that four men brought 
this sick man to the Lord. What do they stand for? 
They stand for the remains of goodness and truth — 
for the good and true things, that are implanted in 
the mind and stored up by the Lord during the ten- 
der years of childhood. Something good and true 
from the Lord lives in every man, although the sins 
of life may have prevented them from coming into 
power. But there comes a time, either in this world, 
or the next world, when these remains are reached 
and awakened; and then, if the man consents, they 
will carry him to the Lord. How wonderful is this 
provision which the Lord makes for man's salva- 
tion ! 

THE CURE. 

The cure of the paralytic stands for the Lord's 
cure of all who really come to Him. He said : "Him 



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129 



that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out." 
Sin is a spiritual disease. It can be cured only by 
the Lord. He is the Son of Man, the very divine 
truth; and because His Human is divine and thus 
Jehovah, He has power on earth to forgive sin. And 
the forgiveness of sin is sending it away. In the case 
of this physical cure, the Lord removed the spiritual 
cause of the man's disease, and then the divine life 
came to him in healing power. And in healing men 
of spiritual paralysis, the Lord, as they look to Him, 
disperses, by His Word, the evil spirits who are asso- 
ciated with the sins of their life, and then, new life 
from Him flows in and spiritual health results. Men 
hearing and obeying His Word today, shall be able 
to take up their bed and go forth before the world, 
testifying to the saving power of Him who is the 
Lord of heaven with power on earth to forgive sin. 



XVI 

JESUS LORD OF THE SABBATH 
St. Mark ii. 13; in. 6. 

The Lord's earthly life was crowded with work. 
u He went about doing good/' When once we grasp 
the relation of the Lord's Humanity to His Divinity, 
it becomes an easy matter to understand the Chris- 
tian teaching that the Son of God is the Divine 
Humanity, the revealed and knowable side of God, 
as the body is the revealed and knowable side of the 
soul. This is one of the lost truths of the Christian 
system, which has been restored in the doctrines of 
the New Church. The Son of God is Jesus Christ ; 
and Jesus Christ is the Divine Humanity. The 
Father is the invisible Divinity. The Son is the 
divine bod} r in which the invisible God becomes 
visible. Thus Jesus Christ is the visible God in 
whom is the invisible. Because this is the relation of 
Father and Son in the Godhead, therefore the Lord's 
earthly life was a revelation of the otherwise un- 
knowable Divinity. He brought the Father forth to 
view. What He said and did originated in the 
depths of the Divinity within Him. In Jesus Christ , 
as the only begotten Son, in Him as the Divine 
Humanity, there is a ynedium through which, in 

130 



Pearls of Great Price 131 



unmingled brightness and beauty, the moral glory 
of God pours its beams. As we follow Him in His 
mission, we instinctively feel that He is acting from 
a life that is not of this world — that He is bringing 
God forth. It was because this is true that on one 
occasion He said: "He that seeth me seeth not me, 
but Him that sent me; and he that heareth me 
heareth not me, but Him that sent me." It is in the 
light of this truth that we come to see the symbolic 
signification of our Lord's sayings and doings. 

This thought gives a new signifiance to our Lord's 
ministry. What He did He does. He does not 
belong to a past age. "He is the same yesterday, 
today, and forever." 

JESUS BY THE SEA-SIDE. 

How many marvelous things were said and done 
by the Lord at the sea-side? It was a favorite place 
with the Lord. Here the multitudes gathered to 
listen to His wonderful words of wisdom. But if 
what He did He does, there must.be a wonderful 
spiritual meaning in His resorting to the sea shore 
to instruct the multitude. Is there a sea-side to 
which He goes today? Yes, He goes to the sea-side 
today as truly as He did in the days of His earthly 
ministry. The sea, which surrounds the land, is the 
symbol used in the Lord's Word to denote the 
natural plane of human thinking, the atmosphere. of 
natural thought in which men in this world live. 



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The quails of the Exodus story, on which the child- 
ren of Israel fed in the evening, came up from the 
sea: and they stand for the delightful things of 
outward life — for the innocent things of natural 
thought — for amusements and recreations that the 
Lord provides for us in those less internal states into 
which we all at times come. 

The sea also pictures to us the letter of the Lord's 
Word: for the letter of the Bible is expressed in the 
terms of man's natural thought. Sometimes the 
Lord sat in a ship and instructed the people on the 
shore; and as often as He did this He dramatized 
what would be His method of spiritual instruction 
through His church — that it would be from doctrine 
drawn from the letter of the Bible and confirmed by 
it. Sometimes He stood on the shore where the land 
and the water met and preached to the people. This 
was what He did on this occasion. And it meant the 
impartation of truth to those who were in simple 
good — truth accommodated to the natural plane of 
thought. 

What a lesson there is here for those whose use it 
is to teach the doctrines of the church! The success- 
ful spiritual teacher is one who does not get away 
from the plane of thought in which the people live. 
Most of our sermons are preached to the angels and 
are entirely away from the plane of life on which the 
people are living. We must learn to go to the sea- 
side of the mind. This does not mean that we are to 



Pearls of Great Price 



133 



abandon the spiritual sense of the Word and moral- 
ize on its letter. It means that we are to abandon 
the dictionary method of this "signifies" and learn 
to open the literal story in a simple and easy way, so 
that the people may see the spiritual meaning in and 
not apart from the letter of the Word. The Son of 
Man comes in the clouds of heaven. The multitude 
resorting unto the Lord by the sea-side to be taught 
of Him is the picture of what some day will be true 
of the New Church. Denominational Christianity 
is passing through a process of doctrinal vastation; 
and when it is all over and the sects are left with 
only a human and finite Christ, with the Bible only 
as a venerable literature, with a humanitarian 
morality instead of spirituality, then the heart of 
Christendom will turn in its hunger to the Lord's 
New Church. And then Jesus will go forth by the 
sea-side and great multitudes will resort unto Him 
to learn the divine message of the internal sense of 
the Word opened to them in the simple stories of 
its literal sense. 

JESUS IN THE HOME OF THE PUBLICAN. 

Levi was a publican — a tax collector. The Lord 
passed by and called him, and he arose and followed 
Him. The next day He sat at meat in his house. 
What Jesus did He does. 

This means that today He is calling publicans 
and sinners and sits at meat in their house. The 



134 Pearls or Great Price 



publicans and the people the Jews called sinners 
were outside the pale of the Jewish church. Jesus 
and His disciples sitting at meat in the house of a 
publican! How that act outraged the churchliness 
of the Scribes and Pharisees! On another occasion, 
when the Lord went home with Zaccheus, the Phari- 
sees exclaimed: u See! He has gone to be the guest 
of a man that is a sinner." There is a great deal of 
difference between accepting a doctrine about a cer- 
tain thing and accepting the thing itself. Many of 
us have yet to learn what the real mission of the 
New Church is. There is a good deal of the Pharisee 
in our hearts. We are disposed to think of our 
church as limited in its ministry to a class. We have 
not waked up to the fact that the church is for all 
sorts and conditions of men. It takes us a long time 
to get away from the idea of a club to that of a 
church. 

The church is here for something more than the 
mere teaching of doctrine. True, it must teach 
sound doctrine, for without doctrine it would not be 
a church. But its mission is the salvation of human 
souls — to call the publicans and sinners to repent- 
ance and to sit at meat in their house — to awaken in 
them a sense of need for God and to enter into their 
states and to be helpful to them. The New Church 
is not exclusive. It is inclusive. And when our 
pulpits begin to ring clear with the doctrine of salva- 
tion from sin, and when we learn to love men, even 



Pearls of Great Price 135 



the fallen and downtrodden, and by loving them 
seek to lift them up, Jesus will come and sit at meat 
in Levi's house and many publicans and sinners will 
sit together with Jesus and His disciples. This time 
shall come. 

NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES. 

The new life of truth, especially the life of the 
supreme truth of God incarnate, could not be held in 
the old wine skins of the Jewish religion. Chris- 
tianity — the new wine — must be put in new wine- 
skins, new bottles. It took some time for the early 
church to learn this truth; but the Christian Church 
finally freed itself from the narrow concepts of 
Judaism and became a world-religion. This was 
the lesson the first Christian Church had to learn. 

The same lesson has been taught to the New 
Christian Church. For the New Church is not a 
Reformation in the first Christian Church, nor one 
of its many divisions. It is the New Dispensation of 
Christianity. True, it is "built on the foundation of 
the prophets and apostles, Jesus Christ Himself 
being the chief cornerstone/' yet the superstructure 
is new. It is not the old structure repaired merely. 
There are no bottles of the old theology that can 
hold the new wine — the new doctrines of this, the 
final dispensation of God to man. There must be 
new bottles for the new wine. The New Church 
must be distinct in its doctrine, its work and its life. 



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And only as its distinctiveness is maintained can it 
grow and do its work in the world. Every effort to 
put it into the old forms fails. The doctrine of the 
Divine Humanity is new wine. Xo interpretation of 
tri-personalism can hold this new wine. For to 
admit into any explanation of the Post Xicene 
doctrine of the divine trinity, the thought of the 
Divine Humanity, would burst those bottles. It 
must be put into new bottles — into a theology that 
is able to contain and express it. Thus we must have 
a new church in essence and form. And deeper than 
all this is the truth that the spiritual life is distinct 
from the natural life and cannot be held in the 
bottles of the old selfish life of the natural man. Xo 
form of self-culture — no form of morality, can hold 
the new wine of that life which comes from the 
Divine Humanity of Jesus Christ. It must have 
new bottles — new forms of life, for its reception and 
expression. 

THE MAX WITH THE WITHERED HAND. 

It was the Sabbath day. Jesus went into the 
synagogue and healed a man who had a withered 
hand. 

Many of the Lord's works of mercy in the healing 
of the sick were done on the Sabbath day, because 
the Jewish Sabbath was a representative day and 
stood for the peace into which the Lord entered as 
He fought against and subjugated the evil powers of 



Pearls of Great Price 



137 



darkness. He was the Lord of the Sabbath day. 
He was really the Sabbath of the world; and He 
gave his disciples the promise of the real Sabbath 
when He said to them: "Peace I leave with you. 
My peace I give unto you." 

The union of Divinity and Humanity in the per- 
son of the Lord Christ, was the supreme Sabbath; 
and coming fully into this union with the Father, 
our Lord could say: "All power is given unto me in 
heaven and on earth. " He could heal the withered 
hand because He could bring down into His human- 
ity and have proceed from it, the divine power itself. 

The hand is the symbol of power. God's hand is 
God's power. When we read: "His hand is not 
shortened that He cannot save/' we are reading 
about the divine power to save unto the uttermost. 
It is a power that reaches to the lowest depths of 
evil — a power to save. 

The withered hand is the symbol of the loss of 
power, especially the loss of power on man's part 
over the evil and false things of life. This was the 
moral condition of the world when our Lord came 
into it. The Lord overcame the hells and so 
delivered man. He restored the withered hand of 
universal humanity, in the sense of re-establishing 
the equilibrium of the moral universe — thus gifting 
all men with power to turn away from hell to 
neaven. "To them gave He power to become sons 
of God." 



138 Pearls of Great Price 



But all this is capable of individual application. 
Keeping the Lord's commandments in the shunning 
of the evils they forbid because they are sins, is to 
stretch forth the withered hand. We cannot keep 
the commandments, in this way, in our own 
strength. Our hand is withered. But the Lord's 
power can flow into our will and empower it to act. 
This is the lesson of the cure. The Lord operates, 
we must co-operate; and He never commands us to 
do anything without, at the same time, giving us 
the power to do it. But we must make the effort, 
and then the power to do comes. "Influx is into 
effort." "Stretch forth thy hand" is what He says 
to us today; and if we will only make the honest 
effort, He will give us the power to shun evil because 
it is sin against Him. 



The reason the Sabbath was accounted most holy 
was because, in the supreme sense, it represented 
the union of the Divine and the Divine Human in 
the Lord, and in a relative sense the conjunction of 
the Divine Human with the human race. As it 
represented these things it also represented heaven 
in the conjunction of good and truth. Hence, too, 
it is, that the seventh day signifies a holy state, and 
in the internal sense the Lord's Kingdom. 

Arcana. 



XVII 

JESUS CHOOSES THE TWELVE. 
St, Mark hi. 7-35. 



There are two aspects in which the Lord may be 
seen and received. The first aspect is natural, the 
second aspect is spiritual. We mean by this that 
there is a way of seeing and receiving the Lord sim- 
ply as an historical personage, and there is a way of 
seeing and receiving Him as the divine Reality, of 
which all the outward history of the Gospel is the 
mere representative. These two ways of seeing and 
receiving the Lord produce two distinct types of life. 
Faith, merely in the outward historic Christ, leads 
to nothing deeper than the refinement of the natural 
life. It does not develop in the soul, the inner spirit- 
ual life. Religion based upon a mere historic faith 
never rises above the thought of the Christ that 
comes from without. To this type of religionist the 
Christ is embalmed in mere outward records and 
confined, in the significance of His birth, life, 
death, resurrection and ascension, to the age which 
witnessed all those events. This is the exoteric con- 

139 



140 Pearls of Great Price 



cept of Christ and the record of His life. It is 
merely outward and historic. 

The esoteric or spiritual concept, and aspect, does 
not den} r , does not ignore, the truth of the historic 
Christ. It believes with a living faith in the actual 
incarnation of the Word and in all the marvelous 
literal history of the Lord's life; but it goes deeper 
and sees in the outward record a divine dramatiza- 
tion of the life of the Lord as He now lives it in the 
life of man's regeneration. The incarnation, life, 
death, resurrection and ascension of the Lord, in 
this spiritual aspect, are actual divine signs and 
correspondences of Him as a living divine reality 
and of all the regenerative activities of His spirit in 
the human soul. Spirituality, and not mere external 
religiosity, result from seeing and receiving the Lord 
in this spiritual way. This is the quality of life the 
New Church produces in all who intelligently re- 
ceive and live her doctrines. The Lord, from this 
viewpoint, is seen as a living divine person — He is 
not entombed in mere outward records — not em- 
balmed in historic creeds, but glorified and living in 
the individual experience of the regenerating man. 
As we learn the great truth that the Lord's life 
among men was a divine dramatization of what His 
life in them must be, the whole gospel story of His 
life assumes a deeper significance. From this point 
of view the story of this week's lesson will yield us 
many helpful things. 



Pearls of Great Price 141 



THE LORD ON THE MOUNTAIN. 
A mountain as an elevation in nature stands for a 
corresponding elevation of the mind. But what has 
this correspondence to do with the Lord? Is He not 
always the high and holy one who inhabiteth etern- 
ity? Yes, this was always true of the divine nature 
in the Lord, but it was not always true of His human 
nature, which He took upon Himself when He was 
born of a woman. His human nature was at first 
finite. True, by glorification, it was made divine; 
but during the processes of its glorification it under- 
went changes of state similar to those* that take 
place in the work of human regeneration,. He alter- 
nated between states of humiliation and states of 
glorification. His humanity was taken through the 
process of a divine and infinite regeneration. In the 
very highest reach of our mind we can only receive 
a finited form of the divine truth. Because this is so, 
we must forever remain on the finite plan of life. 
W e can never become divine. But in the Lord there 
dwelt the divine truth itself, not a finite form of it. 
Inmostly, He was the Word, which in the beginning 
was with God and was God. As a man, He identified 
Himself with this eternal Word and the result was 
the gradual elimination from His humanity of all 
that was finite and the coming down and organiza- 
tion, on all planes, of the eternal Word, by which 
it was made flesh in Him. "And the Word was made 
flesh and dwelt among us." This process was an 



142 Pearls of Great Price 



infinite regeneration. The Divine Humanity re- 
sulted. So he, our Blessed Lord, passed through 
all human states and glorified them. 

His going up on the mountain was a dramatiza- 
tion of His elevation into states of intimate and 
divine union with the Divinity, the Father that 
dwelt in Him. This union with the Father was an 
elevation. It was going up on a mountain — a real 
ascending to Him out of whom He came forth into 
the world — a return to the glory He had with the 
Father before the world was — a state of mountain 
glorification. 

' THE CALL OF THE TWELVE. 

The twelve disciples of the Lord were real human 
beings, but in the divine drama of the Word they 
represent all the goods and truths of the Word, The 
Lord, as a child, acquired a knowledge of the truths 
of the Word. Although inmostly, He was the Word, 
yet in His human mind He acquired a knowledge 
of the Word in the same way that the minds of other 
Jewish boys did, with the difference that He did it 
more rapidly and with deeper understanding. Early 
into His mind there came the perception that He 
was the one of whom the Scriptures treated. At 
twelve years of age He astonished the doctors in the 
temple with His knowledge. The whole vision of 
His mission came to Him then. He said: 'Wist ye 
not that I must be about my Father's business?'' 



Pearls of Great Price 



143 



But the truths of the Word, as the Lord acquired 
them from without, were apparent truths. He 
learned the letter of the Word. But, as He pro- 
gressed in His glorification, the appearances con- 
nected with the truths He learned from the Word 
were put off until in His final state of glorification 
they became wholly divine in Him. 

We all see the lesson. The Lord on the mountain 
calling to Himself the twelve disciples is the drama- 
tization of that wonderful inward process which was 
taking place in His mind by which He was drawing 
into closer connection with Himself the goods and 
truths of the Word and imparting new power to 
them, What a wonderful revelation this is! Anew 
power has been given to the written Word of God 
from Him in whom the Word was made flesh — a 
power which before that event it did not possess. 
He called the twelve unto Himself, He elevated, 
united to Himself, and gave an added power to all 
the goods and truths of His Word. The Lord is not 
true because oj the written W ord, but the written W ord 
is true and has power because oj the Lord. For hav- 
ing ascended through all the discrete degrees of 
truth as they are contained in the Holy Scriptures, 
He now descends through them, quickening and giv- 
ing new life and power to them. 

But all this is capable of individual application. 
In our regeneration, the Lord, who is living over 
again His life in man's regeneration, goes up into a 



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mountain, when from mere faith man attains to a 
state of love to the Lord and begins to act from it. 
It is the story of the elevation of the goods and 
truths of the Word out of the natural mind into the 
spiritual; and there on the mountain of genuine 
love to the Lord He calls them in us to Himself and 
quickens and empowers them as living factors in the 
spiritual life. This is what we all need. It is what 
the church needs. We do not live enough with the 
Lord on the mountain. 

THE THREE GROUPS. 

In St. Matthew, St. Mark and St. Luke— the 
gospels in which we are told the story of the calling 
of the twelve disciples — we have three groups of 
four each. While the three lists differ from each 
other in the arrangement of the disciples, yet they 
all agree in this particular: That taken in fours each 
group consists of the same four names, and each 
group begins with St. Peter. This certainly has a 
vast significance to all who really believe that the 
gospels are divine compositions. Why three groups 
of four each? This trinal order of things finds its 
explanation only in the doctrines of the Xew 
Church. God is trinal. A real trinity exists in the 
Lord. It is not a trinity of manifestations as taught 
by Sabellius, nor a trinity of persons as set forth in 
the Athanasian Creed. There is a distinct trinity in 
the Lord — a trinal distinction in the Godhead — 



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three essentials, called the Father, the Son, and the 
Holy Spirit. These three are distinct and yet united 
in the Lord as soul, body and operation are in man. 

Because of this the heavens are trinal, and the 
human mind trinal. Everything that is a whole is 
trinal. This trine is in the Word. The trine of the 
Word we call celestial, spiritual and natural. Thus 
the three groups of four each stand, each group, for 
a distinct plane of the mind and for the work that 
is to be done in the distinct planes of the mind. 
Space forbids any elaboration of this doctrine, but 
the student of the internal sense of the Word will 
find the study of this principle a most useful and 
delightful exercise, 

BINDING THE STOQNG MAN. 

The Lord under this figure of binding first the 
strong man in order that one may enter into his 
house and spoil his goods is telling us what is true of 
our regeneration. The natural mind, which has 
become evil, is the house of the strong man; and the 
strong man is the love of self. How strong this man 
is ! And when there dawns upon us the light of the 
higher life and we feel inclined to turn to it, how this 
strong man stands guard at the door of his house! 
This is true in personal life; it is true in commercial 
life; it is true in political life. The strong man 
guards his goods. And we are all afraid of him. We 
let things go on that we know to be sinful because 



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we are afraid of this strong man. The whole world , 
in all its planes of life, could soon get rid of this 
strong man if only men would believe in the great 
redemption wrought on man's behalf by the Lord 
Jesus Christ. 

The Lord bound this strong man. He conquered 
the powers of darkness. He spoiled the strong man's 
goods. And what He did single and alone, for of the 
people there were none with Him, He will do in 
all who will believe in His power to save. We can, 
in the Lord's strength, bind this strong man. He is 
strong only because we are afraid of him. "The 
Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be 
afraid?" There is no form of self-love that cannot 
be bound by the man who faces it with those words 
of the Holy Scripture. And he must be bound before 
his house can be entered. Bind self-love b}^ the 
power of the Lord's redemption and his house can 
then be entered and his goods spoiled. 



"In strength of hand Jehovah hath brought you 
forth," Exodus xiii. 3, means that they have been 
delivered by the Lord's Divine power. Strength of 
hand signifies power. When said of Jehovah it 
means "Omnipotence." "The stray one shall be as 
tow," in Isaiah i. 31, means what is hatched from 
man's own intelligence,— Arcana, 



XVIII - 

JESUS TEACHING BY PARABLES. 
St. Mark iv. 1-20. 



It is said of the Lord in the Gospel: "And with- 
out a parable spake He not unto the people." The 
entire Word of the Lord is a divine parable. In its 
letter, it is largely an earthly story; for in its letter 
it treats mainly of mundane things. But these 
earthly things of the letter of God's Word have a 
heavenly meaning within them. The whole letter 
of the Divine Word is therefore a parable of the 
kingdom of God. This concept of the Word deepens 
and broadens the meaning of the Sacred Scriptures. 
Everything of its letter is a parable. This is as true 
of the story of creation related in the first chapter of 
Genesis — as true of the story of the Israelites — as 
true of Saul, David, and Solomon as it is of the 
parable of the Prodigal son or the parable of the 
Sower. This is only another way of saying that the 
Bible, in addition to its literal sense, contains a 
spiritual sense, which treats of the Lord's glorifica- 
tion and of man's regeneration. 

The very moment one rejects the fact of this 
internal sense in the Word, one at the same time 

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rejects the very truth that makes the Bible a divine 
book — the very truth that differences it from books 
of human composition. 

But by the Bible being, in its letter, a parable, 
there is meant a great deal more than is meant by 
figurative language, or analogy, or comparison, or 
illustration, or even symbolism. By the letter of the 
Word being a parable, the Church means that there 
is an absolute correspondence between the literal 
story and the spiritual story within it. And corres- 
pondence is the law of relation between cause and 
effect. All causes are spiritual; all effects are 
natural. The created world, in this sense, is a 
parable; for it is the theatre on which is mirrored 
the spiritual causes of all things. There is therefore 
a correspondence of all orderly natural things to the 
creative and causal divine love and wisdom in the 
Lord. 

The spiritual world is within, yet distinct, from 
the natural world as a cause is in, yet distinct, from 
its effect. This truth is what establishes a perfect 
correspondence between the natural world and the 
spiritual world. And because of this correspondence 
there is a constant influx of life from the Lord, 
through the spiritual world into the natural world. 

The literal sense of the Bible is a transcript of 
nature. Its symbols are incorporated into the very 
structure of the letter of the Word. Thus the 
natural things of its letter answer by correspond- 



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ence to the divine and spiritual things of its spiritual 
sense. 

The Lord's parables in the New Testament follow 
this law. They are earthly stories within which is a 
heavenly meaning. What the Christian world needs 
to know is, that the Lord has opened the heavenly 
meaning within the earthly stories of the Bible. One 
is not left to one's fancy, imagination and self-in- 
telligence' in interpreting the Lord's Word. In 
systematic and doctrinal form, the Lord has made 
known, in the writings of the New Church, the 
nature of the Bible as a divine structure and has 
revealed the infallible law of its interpretation. He 
has revealed His own understanding of the book He 
wrote through the instrumentality of the sacred 
penmen. 

JESUS TEACHING FROM A SHIP. 

The parable of the Sower was delivered by the 
Lord from a ship to a great multitude standing on 
shore. The sea, in one of its significances, stands for 
the letter of the Word and for the atmosphere of 
natural thought. The letter of the Word is an ac- 
commodation of the divine truth to states of natural 
thought. It is a sea in which truths are in abundance 
and adapted to every degree and quality of mind. 
The shore, where the land and the water meet, 
stands for the simple good of life which opens the 
mind to receive instruction from the Lord's Word. 



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No spiritual instruction can be imparted to and 
received by a mind lacking the quality of good 
affection, for it is always with the heart that one 
really believes the truth. If the Church had only 
the human intellect to deal with its doctrines 
would meet with ready reception; for instances are 
rare where the doctrines fail to reach the intellect. 
But here is the heart with its affections to be taken 
into account, and if there is no affection 'in the will 
for learning and obeying the divine truth, it is 
rejected, no matter what the intellect's attitude 
may be. "With the heart man believeth unto 
righteousness." The seashore standing for the 
simple good of life, therefore the great multitude 
who followed the Lord to the seashore represent all 
those human souls and human qualities in human 
souls that are open to heaven and receptive of the 
truths of the Word of God. 

At the present day there seems to be a great fall- 
ing away from the Word, but may it not be the 
result of the mind's revolt against the old concepts? 
May we not confidently believe that the day is not 
far distant when human minds will swing back to a 
love of the Lord's Word as it is now opened in the 
divine doctrines of the Church? Surely the world is 
preparing for just this thing. And it is only a matter 
of waiting and in patience and loyalty possessing 
our souls. For the Lord's purpose in the opening of 
the Word cannot fail. Great multitudes some day 



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will follow the Lord to the seaside and gladly receive 
the words of life from the Holy Word. We should 
not become discouraged; and, above all, we should 
not prove unfaithful to the heavenly vision. "The 
Lord will hasten in His time." 

But Jesus taught the multitude from a ship. A 
ship stands for doctrine — for doctrine drawn from 
the letter of the Word and confirmed by it. The 
Lord instructs from doctrine. He did instruct from 
doctrine during His life among men; and when He 
raised up His church to be His mystical body and 
His real representative in the world, He gave it a 
divine doctrine to preach. Doctrine is necessar}^. 
The Word without doctrine cannot be understood. 
We must have this ship. Jesus must ever teach men 
from it. 

THE SOWER. 

"Behold there went out a sower to sow." The 
Lord is the sower, and the seed He sows is the truth. 
He has gone forth in every age of the world. There 
is no mind in which the truth, in some form, has 
not fallen. In all the religions of the world the 
Lord provides that there shall be truths relating 
man to his maker and to one another. He has not, 
in any nation, left Himself without a witness. 

Among Christians, the Lord is known in His in- 
carnations, so that in a specific sense He went forth 
to sow when He came to men as the Word made 
flesh. 



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In all children, whether born in the church or out 
of the church, of pious parents or of impious parents, 
the Lord inseminates the seeds of truth. This is 
what is meant by the implantation of remains. He 
sows something of His own in every child. He ever 
goes forth to sow. And the human heart furnishes 
the soil into which the seeds of truth fall. Here we 
come to the great lesson of the parable. 

THE WAYSIDE. 

"Some fell by the wayside." The Lord explained 
the wayside as representing those who hear the 
Word but do not understand it. Here we need to 
be guarded against the false idea that understanding 
the truth is a mere intellectual process — a mere 
intellectual apprehension of the truth. Of course, 
an intellectual apprehension of the truth is needful, 
but understanding the truth is something deeper 
and more vital than an intellectual apprehension of 
it. What the Lord means by understanding is "to 
understand with the heart." And this means receiv- 
ing the truth in love. Love or goodness in the heart 
forms the soil in which the seeds of truth take root, 
grow and bring forth fruit. Naturally speaking, the 
wayside is where there is no receiving soil. It is a 
part of the field that has been trodden down — made 
hard, so that seeds falling upon it lie on the surface. 
They do not take root. So the wayside minds are 
minds that have become hardened — minds that are 



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indifferent to the truth. There is no affection for 
living it. And as the fowls of the air came and 
devoured the seeds that fell on the hard wayside, so 
thoughts of worldly life — of pleasure, of gain, of 
riches — thoughts of merely bodily and natural life 
come and -devour up the seeds of truth. No man 
can retain any truth for which he has no affection. 
What a solemn thought this is! Before a man goes 
to hell he rejects every truth of religion. The fowls 
come and "devour them up." 

THE STONY GROUND. 

The Lord in explaining the meaning of the seed 
falling on stony ground said: "The same is he that 
heareth the Word, and anon with joy receiveth it; 
yet hath he no root in himself, but dureth for a 
while; for when tribulation or persecution ariseth 
because of the Word, by and by he is offended." 

We are all familiar with the class of minds 
denoted by the stony ground. With great readiness 
and seeming joy do they accept the truth; and won- 
derful is their zeal and enthusiasm; and if they were 
never called upon to make any sacrifice for the 
truth, to meet with no opposition in standing for it, 
they would endure to the end. But the truth 
arouses the carnal mind into opposition against it. 
It awakens the slumbering evils of the natural heart, 
arid often is antagonized by those who have stood in 
the relation of friends. Then, because the truth has 



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only entered the intellect and has not rooted itself in 
the heart's love, such an one begins to grow indif- 
ferent, to lose his zeal, and finally abandons the 
truth and sinks down into natural states of mind. 
Regeneration is impossible without temptation. 
But with the man who not only intellectually 
receives the truth, but at the same time loves it, 
temptation serves to clarify his vision of it and to 
strengthen his love for it. Not so with the man who 
has a mere intellectual delight in the truth. He is 
not willing to suffer for the truth. He loves himself 
more than he loves the truth, and always turns 
away from it when tribulation arises. The sun of 
his self-love comes up and scorches the plants of the 
new life. We have all witnessed this sad spectacle. 
It is indeed sad. For the last state of such an one is 
worse than his first state. 

THE THORNS THAT CHOKE THE PLANTS. 

The thorns that spring up and choke the growing 
plants, the Lord tells us, are the "cares of this world 
and the deceitfulness of riches/ ' This is often true 
literally. We have all seen the cares of this world — 
w r orldly loves, ambitions and aims spring up and 
stifle the life of heaven, just beginning to grow in 
the soul. We have all seen men and women grow in- 
different to the church — lose interest in the things of 
their spiritual life, because of worldly prosperity. 
This need not be true, but it is often true that 



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worldly riches choke the life of heaven and destroy 
the soul. 

But there is another world and other than natural 
riches the cares and deceitfulness of which often 
choke the Word and stifle the spiritual life. We refer 
to the world of the natural mind. The cares of that 
world — absorption in the things of mere natural 
good — of mere natural thought, is sure to choke the 
W^ord of God as thorns choke growing plants. And 
the deceitfulness of the riches of the natural mind, 
its riches of knowledge, especially its knowledge of 
religious truth, is a thing that we have to guard 
against. For we are easily deceived into thinking 
that a knowledge of religion is religion itself. It is 
not enough to know the truth. We must live the life 
of truth. Ground that will grow thorns will grow 
wheat, but that the wheat may grow the thorns 
must be rooted out. Here is where this class of 
hearers fail. They do not root out of their minds the 
things that stand in the way of spiritual growth. 
The Word of life is choked in them. It does not go 
on to fruitage. 

THE GOOD GROUND, 

"And these are they which are sown on good 
ground; such as hear the Word and receive it and 
bring forth fruit. " This class of hearers receive the 
truth, not only into their understanding, but, what 
is better, into their hearts; and they bear fruit. 



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With them religion has relation to life. They bear 
the fruits of spirit. But all do not bear fruit in 
the same degree. 

THREE CLASSES OF FRUIT BEARERS. 

There were three classes of unprofitable hearers 
of the Word. These are offset by three classes of 
profitable hearers. "And bringeth forth fruit, some 
a hundred fold, some sixty fold, some thirty fold." 

These numbers, for all numbers in the Word are 
significant, indicate three distinct states of the 
regenerate process, and also three distinct classes of 
men. These numbers are ten tens, six tens and three 
tens. Think of this. Ten stands for a state that is 
full and complete. The other numbers combined 
with it stand for the quality of the state meant by 
ten. Here we reach the doctrine that there are three 
distinct states of regeneration and therefore three 
classes of the regenerate — the celestial, spiritual and 
natural. Ten always stands for remains. Ten tens 
stand for the good and truth of a full state of re- 
mains confirmed by the life. This is the celestial 
state. Six tens stand for remains of good and truth 
qualified and confirmed by spiritual temptation. 
This is the spiritual state of regeneration. Three 
tens stand for the good and truth of remains gained 
through instruction with its simple obedience to the 
literal precepts of the Word. This is the natural 
state of regeneration. 



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One hundred, sixty, thirty — when we think of the 
qualities for which these numbers stand as they 
relate to humanity, we may see that the number of 
unprofitable hearers is small compared with those 
who are included in the sweep of the spiritual sig- 
nificance of these numbers. All come ultimately 
into heaven who have not by confirmed evil "closed 
the way to their remains. " How wonderful is the 
Lord's Mercy! 



JESUS TEACHING BY PARABLES THE 
GROWTH OF THE KINGDOM. 

St. Mark iv. 21-34. 



It was said of the Christ : "Never man spake as 
this man/' The men who said this did not know 
the source of the Lord's wisdom. They did not 
know that He was the Word made flesh. He was 
just that — the Divine Reason in human form and 
manifestation. That was why no man ever spake as 
He spake. Xo book was ever written as the Bible 
was written. As the Christ, when view r ed in the 
external aspects of His person, was not unlike other 
men, but differenced from all other men in His 
internal life, so the Bible, viewed in its external 
aspects, does not differ materially from other books. 
The difference — the point of its separateness from 
other books, is to be found in its internal structure. 
It is the Word of God written in the terms of man's 
language; but within it is wholly different from 
books of human composition. It has an internal 
structure of divine truth within the external struc- 
ture of its letter. The structure of the divine Word, 
in the historic Christ, was the source of His power 

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and wisdom. That was why no man ever spake as 
He spake. The internal structure of the divine truth 
within the letter of the Bible is the ground of its 
power and the source of its wisdom. That is why 
its message is different from the message of any 
other book. 

The man, the church, that gets this point of view> 
goes to the Bible, not to learn science, or history, but 
spiritual truth. Viewed from this point, the Bible 
becomes an open heaven, and the angels of God are 
seen ascending and descending upon the Son of Man 
as Jacob saw them going up and coming down on 
the rungs of the dream ladder. 

But none of this could be realized if the Lord, who 
is the Word, had not, through a man prepared for 
the work, opened to the human understanding the 
internal sense of the Holy Scriptures. Opened by 
Him, in His light we may now see light. Approach- 
ing the Lord's parables of the Kingdom from this 
side of the divine Book, one sees their structure, 
meaning and purpose. 

THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

The parables of the Kingdom are parables of the 
processes of the regeneration of man. For the King- 
dom of God is not some great ecclesiasticism with 
mitred prelates and robed priests. Jesus said: "The 
Kingdom of God cometh not with observation. 
Neither shall ye say lo: here or lo: there, For behold 



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the Kingdom of God is within you." The church is 
the Kingdom of God ; but the church is in the regen- 
erating man. It results from the union of goodness 
and truth in man's mind and life. Each regenerating 
man is the church in its least form as each angel is 
heaven in its least form, The divine of the Lord 
makes heaven in an angel and the divine of the Lord 
makes the church in man. Strictly speaking, there 
is no church apart from the regenerated affection, 
thought and life in man, nor any heaven apart, as 
an independent existence, from the angels. The 
church as an organization is necessary, but it is only 
the outer structure through which the church as an 
internal life of good and truth, functions. So all 
the parables of the kingdom are parables of man's 
spiritual life — statements of the truths and laws of 
order that govern the regenerative processes of the 
divine life in man's life. 

The acknowledgment of the Lord in His Divine 
Humanity, the acknowledgment of Him that leads 
to obedience to His Commandments, enthrones 
Him as the divine King in one's heart. Here is the 
starting point in the coming of the kingdom. 
"Unless ye believe that I am, ye shall die in your 
sins," said our Lord. There can be no kingdom of 
God in human souls unless Jesus Christ, who is 
Lord of lords and King of kings is acknowledged 
and obeyed. He must come in and reign over us, by 
reigning in us — bringing everything in our natural 



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minds into subjection to His divine majesty and 
sovereign will. Then man becomes a kingdom of 
God and is obedient to his king and realizes in a 
regenerated life the peace of God in his heart. 

A MAN CASTING SEED INTO THE GROUND. 

Every seed involves in its structure the potenti- 
alities of all that is to come forth from it in the plant 
or tree. The kind of plant or tree that the seed is 
to produce is involved in the seed. Truth is a seed. 
There are many kinds of truth as there are many 
kinds of seed. A civil truth will produce a civil life; 
a moral truth will produce a moral life and a spirit- 
ual truth will produce a spiritual life. What one 7 ? 
life is in its quality results from the kind of seed he 
casts in his ground. 

In this parable the Lord is showing us the need 
for learning, understanding and planting, in the soil 
of our minds, the seed that will grow in us the king- 
dom of God. The seed that will do this is the divine 
truth — the truth that we can find only in the Holy 
Scriptures. And there is brought out clearly in this 
parable man's part in the forming of the kingdom 
in his soul. u So is the kingdom of God, as if a man 
should cast seed into the ground/' The man is to 
take the seed and cast it into the ground. This man 
does when he goes to the Word and learns the truth. 
He cannot get the truth in any other way. He must 
be taught from the Word. 



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Then he must take that spiritual seed. He must 
chose it; he must understand it, and he must value 
it enough to cast it into the soil of his heart. All this 
man must do. He may have the truth in his mem- 
ory, but truth merely in the memory as memory 
knowledge, will no more produce fruit than seeds in 
a granary will produce a harvest. He may have the 
truth in his intellect, but truth merely in the intel- 
lect as intellectual knowledge, will no more grow in 
him a spiritual life than seed sown on ice will grow 
and bear fruit. He must cast the seed of truth into 
the ground — not merely on its surface, but into the 
ground. It must be planted in the affection of his 
heart for the kind of life that is involved in the 
truth. This is man's part. It is all very simple; but 
it is one of the most difficult things to lead men to 
do. 

RISING DAY AND NIGHT. 
Day and night, as natural divisions of time, are 
used in the Scriptures as symbols. Day is used to 
symbolize a state of spiritual openness of mind — a 
state in which the mind is fully awake and respon- 
sive to the appeals of spiritual truth — a state proper 
to the heavenly and internal mind. Night is used to 
symbolize a state in which one is less conscious of 
spiritual forces — a state of the natural mind in 
which one feels the pull and stress of the world. 
These two states are the day and the night of the 
world within one. 



Pearls of Great Price 163 



The progress of regeneration — the growth of the 
spiritual life, is one of alternating states. One has 
one's days and nights, states of sleep and states of 
wakefulness. But through these states the seed of 
truth that has been cast into the good ground of an 
honest heart, goes on growing. 

THE LORD GROWS THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. 

Regeneration is to us largely an unconscious proc" 
ess. It is an internal process, and is effected by the 
Lord alone as we co-operate with Him in our daily 
life. Our part is to cast the seed into the ground and 
to rise up day and night — to learn the truth — to 
plant it deep in our hearts — to provide a suitable 
and congenial environment for it. This done daily, 
the Lord will do the rest. He does the growing from 
within. We cannot be with Him there. This is a 
very important doctrine of the church. To put it 
in the words of the church writings: "The Lord and 
man cannot be together in the internal mind, but 
only in the external. " 

The Lord teaches us this doctrine in that wonder- 
ful passage in the Psalms: "The heaven, }^ea, the 
heavens of heavens belong unto the Lord, but the 
earth hath He given to the children of men." 

We may know many facts the how of which we do 
not know. Facts are things external enough to be 
seen and studied; but the how is always a thing that 
belongs to those processes that are veiled from us 



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and known only to Him who is life and whose life is 
the light of men. So of regeneration. We may see 
the effects of the wonderful miracle, for miracle it is, 
in our own life, and in the life of others, but the how 
— the innumerable agencies — the secret influences, 
by which the Lord effects the great miracle, no man 
knows. And yet, the divine work goes on day and 
night . All that the Lord asks of us is that we look to 
Him in prayer, read the Word, be faithful in church 
attendance, seek Him in the Holy Communion, and 
daily shun the evils forbidden in the ten command- 
ments. This is what is meant by ' 'rising up day and 
night," Do these things faithfully and sincerely, 
and the seed shall spring up and grow, we know not 
how. 

THE EARTH BRINGING FORTH OF HERSELF. 

Heaven and earth, in the symbology of the Holy 
Scriptures, are used to represent the two distinct 
minds of men — heaven his spiritual mind and earth 
his natural mind. These two minds, when in a state 
of order, are connected and related by correspond- 
ence. The internal mind is in the Lord's keeping. 
It is the sinless side of man. The external mind is in 
man's keeping. It is the fallen and sinning side of 
man. It needs regeneration. And in this mind, man 
acts as of himself. This as of himself is the earth 
bringing forth of herself. It is the doctrine that man 
must co-operate with the Lord. As he does this, he 



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165 



is in the appearance that he is doing the work. If he 
were not kept in this appearance, he would have no 
freedom and could not be regenerated. 'Tn doing- 
good and in shunning evil, man must act as of him- 
self; yet, at the same time, he must acknowledge 
that the will, the understanding and the power to do 
so are solely from the Lord. " The Lord regenerates 
the internal of the natural man, as he from the 
Lord reforms his external life and brings it i,nto con- 
formity to the Lord's will. The earth in him must 
bring forth of herself. There can be no force — no 
external compulsion. As of himself must man act. 

THE STAGES OF GROWTH. 

The blade, the ear, the full corn in the ear: Do 
we not see here the doctrine that regeneration is not 
an instantaneous work wrought in man by the om- 
nipotent grace of God? Regeneration is the con- 
ception and birth of a new life in man. It is being 
born from above. It is a very slow process; for it is 
not the refining, through self-culture, of the natural 
life. That leads to morality but not to spirituality. 
An atheist may become a civil and moral man. 

Regeneration is a different thing. It is a new life 
received from the Lord. It is distinct from, and yet 
within the natural life, as a divine power to mould 
and fashion the natural life into an image of itself. 
And it grows. It does not come once for all. It is 
a gradual growth; we shall be going on in this 



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growth to eternity. There is first the blade. That is 
as far as many of us get in this life. There is the ear. 
That some reach in this world. There is the full 
corn in the ear. That only a few attain in this life. 
But if the blade has come, we may thank God and 
take courage; for if we are faithful eternity will 
bring us to the full corn in the ear. 



XX 

JESUS BRINGING PEACE 
St. Mark iv. 35; v. 29. 



The miracles recorded in the -Lord's Word are 
very generally regarded, even by many professing 
Christians, as things that never happened. This 
rejection of the miracles is due largely to ignorance 
concerning the spiritual world and its relation to 
the natural world. One of the great services the 
doctrines of the New Church render us is the ration- 
al basis they give to faith. We are now permitted to 
enter intellectually into the things of faith. Whereas 
the old teachings separated the other world from 
this and located it somewhere in the space of 
Nature, the doctrines revealed from heaven for the 
establishment of Christianity anew show us that the 
spiritual world is not within, but above and interior 
to Nature. It was created by the Lord through the 
medium of the spiritual sun and is the real and 
living world. The natural world, created by means 
of the natural sun, is a dead world, because it is a 
material world. These two worlds — the living 
spiritual world and the dead material world — are 
not spiritually separated. They are contiguous, and 

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are related by an absolute correspondence. Thus 
Nature has a spiritual basis, and because there is a 
correspondence relating the living world and the 
dead world, therefore there is a constant influx of 
life from God through. the spiritual sun and world 
into nature. Nature receives this influx and furn- 
ishes it with a plane of reaction, and thus all the 
forms of life in nature live from God through the 
ever present spiritual world. The spiritual world is 
the world of causes, the natural world is the world 
of effects. 

All the miracles recorded in the Bible find their 
explanation in this doctrine of a world of causes, 
which is living, and a world of effects, which is 
dead. The living world by correspondence flows, as 
to its forces, into the dead world, and creates all the 
appearances of life visible in Nature. Miracles were 
then only openings in Nature that let the super- 
natural in and down. They were ultimations of 
spiritual forces — the world-soul, acting into its own 
body. 

God reigns throughout His creation. While, as to 
His person, He transcends Nature, yet by influx of 
life from Himself He is immanent in His creation. 
And while He never violates His own law and order, 
yet He can act through higher into lower law, and 
when He does this, a miracle is the result. We must 
remember that there are no laws of Nature. There 
are laws for Nature. 



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169 



Now when the Lord came into the world, by the 
gate of birth, He took upon Himself His whole crea- 
tion, both spiritual and natural. He was the central 
life and power, and all outward Nature was subject 
to His sovereign will. He was the life of all things; 
and from Himself, as the Word, had power over all 
the forces of Nature. For by Him all things were 
made. So that operating from Himself, through the 
spiritual cause world into the natural world, He, by 
His own creative life wrought His miracles. 

But there is something more. His miracles repre- 
sented the operations of His truth and goodness in 
the working of corresponding miracles in the life of 
the regenerating man. The outward miracle, on the 
plane of nature, becomes the symbol of the inward 
miracle, on the plane of the spirit. 

THE LORD AND THE DISCIPLES PASSING TO THE 
OTHER SIDE. 

The Lord and His disciples were, at this time, on 
the east side of Jordan. Here is where the two tribes 
and a half took up their residence after Canaan had 
been conquered and its land allotted to the people. 
This Israelitish possession, on the east of Jordan 
stands in the Bible drama for the more external and 
natural states of the spiritual life, while Canaan, or 
the "other side/' stands for more interior states and 
phases of regeneration. To pass over to the other 
side is to pass from external and natural states to 



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states more interior. This is what all do who grow 
in the regenerate life. For the spiritual life always 
lies on the other side of the natural life. The Lord 
says to us today: "Let us pass over unto the other 
side." 

The religion of Jesus Christ has for its aim the 
implantation and growth in man and their final 
dominance, of the two loves that make heaven, the 
love of the Lord and the love of the neighbor. We 
are not born into these loves; for so far as our 
inheritance from our natural parents is concerned, 
we are born into the two opposite loves — the love of 
self and the love of the world. Left to ourselves, and 
apart from any spiritual influence and teaching, we 
would never be able to enter into an}' higher loves. 
But the Lord, while our minds are tender, impres- 
sionable and plastic, implants in us good and true 
things, which, later on, He reaches and awakens, 
and by means of which He leads us to desire some- 
thing higher than a mere animal existence. Then 
He comes, and if we are willing to follow Him, leads 
us to the "other side" — to a spiritual life — the life of 
loving Him and the neighbor. Then it is that the 
love of self and the love of the world are subordi- 
nated to the higher spiritual love of the Lord and 
the neighbor, but to attain this happy state we 
must go with Him to "the other side" — to the 
Canaan of our being. 



Pearls of Great Price 171 



THE SHIP IN WHICH THE PASSAGE IS MADE. 

A ship was necessary in crossing the sea to the 
other side. A ship, as the means of passing over a 
body of water from one place to another, is the sym- 
bol of doctrine, or of knowledge of what is true and 
good. Knowledge is not truth, nor is it goodness, 
but it is a vessel which contains them and by which 
both truth and goodness are conveyed to the under- 
standing and from it to the will and from it to the 
life. A mind without knowledge of natural things 
can make no progress. Think of the larger natural 
life we are all able to live today over and above the 
narrow life of two centuries ago! What has made this 
larger life possible? It has been increased through 
natural knowledge. So of the spiritual life. It cannot 
grow in one who has no knowledge of it. The Lord 
said: "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall 
make you free/' We must have knowledge of the 
Lord, of the Word — of the spiritual life — of heaven 
— in order to come into the spiritual life. And all 
who have this knowledge have the ship in which 
they may pass to the other side with the Lord. 

THE STORM ON THE SEA. 

The sea on which the Lord and His disciples were 
embarked was an expansion of the river Jordan. 
The children of Israel crossed the Jordan in making 
their entrance into Canaan. The expansion of the 



172 Pearls of Great Price 



Jordan, called in this story the sea, stands for the 
states of natural life — the atmosphere of natural 
thought, over which one passes to the other side — 
to the spiritual Canaan. This plane of the mind — 
the natural rational — is intermediate between the 
natural mind proper and the spiritual mind proper. 
It must be crossed to reach "the other side" — the 
distinctly spiritual life. 

But on this sea, the disciples encountered the 
storm. How true, spiritually, this is of every one 
who is crossing over from states of natural life to 
states of spiritual life! We cannot be regenerated 
without experiencing temptation. The temptations 
of regeneration are spiritual assaults made by the 
hells against the things of faith and love in the mind 
of the regenerating man; and these assaults are 
made by exciting and making active the evil and 
false states of the natural mind. The sea was made 
tempestuous by the stormy wind. How easy to see 
in the stormy wind a picture of the evil influxes from 
hell that throw life into a tempest! The Lord sees 
what is in man. He knows that no one can come 
into heaven until his evils have been awakened, 
seen, acknowledged, confessed, repented of, and 
removed. They cannot be covered over hy an 
imputed righteousness. They must be shunned and 
removed. And this can be effected only through 
temptation. 

The Lord permits evil spirits, who are confirmed 



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173 



in the evils that He is seeking to remove from our 
minds, to flow into and excite them in us. This in- 
flux makes the great tempest on the sea within us. 
But, if seeing our evils, we repent of them, the evil 
spirits who excited them and who love them draw 
them to themselves and thus become the negative 
instruments in their removal. Since the Lord con- 
quered the hells, this is one of the uses He makes 
them serve. 

THE LORD ASLEEP IN THE SHIP. 

The sleep of the Christ in the midst of the storm ! 
What does it mean? It has two distinct meanings in 
relation to the regenerating man: (1) During states 
of temptation one must be left apparently alone in 
order that one may act against it as of oneself; for 
if in states of temptation one had the full conscious- 
ness of the divine presence and help and felt confi- 
dent of deliverance, one would make no effort as of 
oneself. Man must seem to himself to be left alone 
to fight his battle. Then, when he conquers, the 
victory is his and the good gained can be appropri- 
ated to him. This was true of the Lord Himself in 
His combats with the hells. He endured tempta- 
tions in the human taken through Mary ; and during 
the combats, the divine side of the Lord was veiled 
from His human consciousness. To His human side, 
it seemed that He was left alone — forsaken. This 
was that He might fight and overcome the hells by 



174 Pearls of Great Price 



"His own proper human power." So the Lord 
asleep during the storm is the picture of what is true 
of us in our hours of trial. The Lord seems to leave 
us alone to fight our spiritual battle. He seems 
asleep. But this is only apparently true; for we are 
told that in reality the Lord and the angels are 
nearer to us in our temptations than at other times. 
He never really leaves us alone— never really sleeps. 
One of the most beautiful statements contained in 
the Church writings is this: "The divine love never 
sleeps. " 

(2) Man has two minds, a natural mind and a 
spiritual mind. Jesus asleep, tranquil and peaceful, 
in the very midst of the outward agitation and 
alarm — what a wonderful picture it is of the inward 
peace, far away in the interiors of the spiritual mind, 
even while the natural mind is in states of turmoil 
and alarm! The Lord dwells in the inmost soul of 
His disciples; and where He is there is peace, 
although in hours of trial His disciples are not con- 
cious of it. This is one of the most comforting 
doctrines of the Church. Peace and repose within, 
even under the stress and storm of outward life. 
This is Jesus, calmly sleeping amid the storm. 

JESUS AWAKENED. 

Reduced to their extremity, powerless against the 
storm, the disciples awakened the Lord. What does 
it mean? It means that in the direful temptations 



Pearls of Great Price 175 

of life we are brought to realize our danger and our 
weakness, and are brought to a realizing sense of 
our utter dependence upon Him who has power to 
quell the passions of the heart. When we thus turn 
to Him for help, He seems to awake, but the reality 
back of that appearance is that we become conscious 
of His presence. 

JESUS STILLING THE STORM. 

We are told that the Lord arose and rebuked the 
winds and the sea. A wonderful picture, this, of the 
divine control over nature! Yes, but it types to us 
the Lord's control over the destructive forces of evil. 
The outward storm is the picture of the inward 
storm, and the Lord's power over the outward storm 
the picture of His power over the inward storm. 
He arises and rebukes the inward storm just as He 
did the outward storm, only when it has taught us 
the lesson that without Him we can do nothing. He 
wakes up when we turn to Him. He is always 
within reach of the soul 



In the Spiritual World, as in the natural, there 
come forth strong winds and storms, but the storms 
in the Spiritual World come forth from the Divine 
Influx into the parts below, where are those who are 
in evils and falsities. — Apocalypse Explained. 



XXI 

JESUS RESTORES LIFE AND HEALTH. 
St. Mark v. 21-43 



The Lord said on one occasion: "I am the resur- 
rection and the Life." Such a claim on the part of 
the Lord was equivalent to saying: "I am God." 
For only God can be the "resurrection and the 
Life." That was what He was and is. Only as we 
come to see Him as God manifested in the flesh 
have we any rational explanation of His Person and 
life. Those who deny the sole and supreme deity of 
Jesus Christ are driven to the position where they 
must either repudiate the New Testament record of 
His sayings, doings and claims, or leave them unex- 
plained. 'How could a good man say: "I am the 
resurrection and the Life"? How could a mere 
Teacher say: "I am the way, the truth and the 
life"? How could one born of Joseph and Mary say: 
"Before Abraham was I am"? The doctrines of the 
New Church furnish the only possible explanation 
of the Person and claims of Jesus Christ. 

The t riper sonalist, like the humanitarian, has no 
adequate explanation of Christ's Person and claims. 
It is true, that he accepts the Divinity of the Lord, 

17G 



Pearls of Great Price 177 



but he accepts Him as the second divine person in a 
trinity of divine persons. He does not accept Him 
as God Himself. The so-called Evangelical Church 
of today believes in one God, plus a Divine Jesus, 
The Latitudinarian religious bodies believe in one 
God with Jesus as His highest human representa- 
tive. 

The New Church, which is the New Dispensation 
of the Christian Religion stands alone in maintain- 
ing the Christian doctrine that Jesus Christ is the 
incarnate God — the Jehovah of the Old Testament 
— the eternal and infinite Godhead veiled in mortal 
flesh. This was the ancient Catholic Faith. The 
ancient Creed states that doctrine clearly: 
"Two whole and perfect natures, that is to say, the 
Godhead and manhood, were joined together in one 
person.' ' 

This was the doctrine of the early Apostolic 
church. In the age of the Councils and amid the 
trinitarian and christological controversies, it was 
buried beneath the rubbish and lost to the Christian 
church. It is now restored in the rise and founding 
of the New Apostolic Church. For in the doctrines 
of the New Christian Church, the Divine Man is 
restored to the Christian system and accepted as 
the "true God and eternal life." 

Starting here, there is not the slightest difficulty 
in the way of the acceptance of all the New Testa- 
ment teaches concerning the divine conception, per- 



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son and Godhead of the Lord Jesus Christ. Nor is 
there any block of stumbling to the acceptance of 
the literal truth of the miracles recorded in the four 
gospels. 

THE HEALING OF THE WOMAN WITH AN ISSUE OF 
BLOOD. 

In the symbology of the Bible, man and woman 
stand, man for truth and woman for affection. 
Truth is the masculine principle and love the 
feminine principle of the human mind. These two 
principles, in their personification, give us man and 
woman. Man is masculine not only in his body but 
in his mind. Woman is feminine, not only in her 
body but in her mind. The male man is character- 
ized by intelligence, the female man (woman) by 
love or affection. Here lies the spiritual basis of sex. 
It is not that the man is intelligence without love; 
that the woman is love without intelligence, for both 
have intelligence and love. It is that in the male 
mind intelligence is in excess and predominates, 
while in the female mind affection is in excess and 
predominates. 

This is according to the divine order in their crea- 
tion, and is the spiritual ground and reason for 
marriage. For in a true conjugal union the man 
brings to the woman the mental and spiritual 
quality she lacks, and the woman to the man the 
affectional and celestial quality he lacks. And thus 
it is that in marriage they become one man. This 



Peakls of Great Price 



179 



is what the Lord meant when He said: ^And they 
twain shall be one flesh." Here we reach the perfect 
poise and balance of life. Marriage, seen in this 
light, becomes most truly a divine sacrament, and 
the love that makes it the holiest love given by the 
Lord to angels in heaven and to men on earth, 

Worked out in the light of this correspondence, 
we can see that the woman of this miracle stands for 
the will and its affection. The will in each one of us 
is diseased. And its disease is, spiritually under- 
stood, an issue of blood. 

The blood is the life or the soul of the flesh. It 
is the vital fluid from which the body is formed. 
There is nothing in the body that was not first in 
the blood. When Harvey discovered the circulation 
of the blood, he made it possible for us to under- 
stand how the body is fed and built. Understanding 
the offices of the blood, it is easy to see that it cor- 
responds to truth pervaded by the life of love from 
which the good that constitutes the spiritual body 
of man is derived, sustained and renewed. 

A drain of the life stream — the blood — instantly 
suggests its correspondence to a state in which the 
natural life is separated from its rightful connection 
with the spiritual life; for in such a state of separa- 
tion of the natural from the spiritual, there follows 
a drain — a waste — an issue, that diseases the whole 
life and causes one to live a mere worldly life — a 
life without spiritual ends and purposes, How wide- 



180 Pearls of Great Price 



spread this spiritual disease is! How many people 
there are who live a natural life alone! God, the 
spiritual world, the spiritual life, with its high pur- 
poses and noble ideals — these are not in their 
thoughts. And in all such lives there takes place a 
perversion and dissipation of the very truth by 
which the spiritual body should be built up into 
strength and beauty. This is the spiritual meaning 
of the issue of blood. 

COMING BEHIND THE LORD. 

The head is the seat of two brains. The larger 
brain — the cerebrum, is in the front of the head and 
is the organ of the understanding. The lesser brain, 
the cerebellum, is in the back of the head, and is the 
organ of the will. Here we may see the spiritual 
meaning of the woman coming behind the Lord; 
for in relation to the Lord, the back and the face 
stand for the divine will and the divine understand- 
ing. And in the Lord the divine will is the divine 
love and the divine understanding is the divine 
wisdom. 

The divine love is the ever approachable, ever 
active, sleepless cerebellum of the moral universe. 
Do we not see the beautiful lesson suggested by the 
woman coming behind the Lord? It stands for the 
fact that when we are made conscious of the dread- 
ful disorders of life that result from the separation of 
the natural life from the spiritual, and come to the 



Pearls of Great Price 



181 



Lord for forgiveness and help, that we come to His 
love as objects of His love which does not condemn, 
but pardons, rather than to His truth which con- 
demns. We come behind Him. 

THE LORD'S GARMENT. 

We read of the Lord: u He is clothed with light as 
with a garment." In the broad sense and applica- 
tion of the symbol, the literal sense of the Holy 
Scriptures, is the Lord's garment. It clothes, accom- 
modates and brings within human reach, the 
divine love and wisdom of the interior senses of the 
holy Word of God. The letter ot the Bible is the 
divine medium of life and cure to all who are 
suffering from the spiritual disease of which the 
woman's natural disease was the type. 

St. John in vision saw the Lord clothed with a 
garment down to the feet. And the long garment of 
the Son of Man, a garment that reached to the feet 
— symbolized the letter of God's Word which 
reaches clear down to the most external plane of 
humanity's life — the feet of the world, to give life 
to all who come behind the Lord and touch it. 

The letter of the Word is the point of contact 
between the Lord as the Word and man. St. 
Matthew in recording this miracle, tells us that the 
woman touched the hem of His garment. The hem 
of the Lord's garment! Do we not see that the Ten 
Commandments are the very hem of the letter of the 



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Bible? They are within the reach of man; and when 
this hem of the Lord's garment is really touched, 
virtue goes forth from the Lord as the Word and 
heals the one who thus by touching it, releases its 
power. 

THE RAISING OF J AI HITS' DAUGHTER. 

The healing of the woman with the issue of blood, 
took place while the Lord was on His way to the 
home of Jairus. However disconnected events and 
occurrences may seem in the letter of the Word, in 
its spiritual sense they are connected in a beautiful 
and marvelous manner. 

Thus the story of the healing of the woman is re- 
lated to the raising of the daughter of Jairus. Both 
the woman and the daughter of Jairus stand for 
affection, but the woman for a more interior affec- 
tion than that represented by the daughter. 

The healing of the woman pictures the removal of 
an interna] obstruction to the inflow of the divine 
life down to the plain on which the affection denoted 
by the daughter of Jairus lies inactive. The daughter 
of the ruler stands for the affection of goodness in 
the external mind. This affection cannot be made 
active until the more interior affection represented 
by the woman is restored. 

JESUS IN THE RULER'S HOUSE. 

The house is, of course, the symbol of the mind, 
but a house, specifically, stands for the department 



Pearls of Great Price 



183 



of the mind which we denominate the will; and in 
this case the will of the natural mind. The Lord 
in the ruler's house types to us the presence of the 
Lord in the/ will of the natural mind, Here is where 
He must come that the little maid of our mind — 
the affection of good, may be restored. Truth, as 
light, is the Lord in the understanding. This is not 
enough. He must become operative in the wilL 

The dispersion of the crowd stands for the re- 
moval of the worldly affections and thoughts that 
obstruct the operation of the divine love and truth. 
How essential this is! So long as our minds are 
filled with worldly feeling and thought — so long as 
these are permitted to invade the mind, the affec : 
tion of good lies inactive and powerless. Of this 
- crowd it is said that the Lord "put them all out." 
Here is the point. The worldly things of life belong 
outside. The Lord cannot raise the little maid— the 
gentle affection of good, so long as this crowd of 
worldly feeling and thought are in the mind. They 
must be "put out." They belong to the outside of 
life, not to the inside of life. And this putting of 
them out is done the very moment one allows the 
Lord to come with His regenerating power into his 
will. 

The crowd put out, the Lord took the father and 
the mother of the little maid, and Peter, James and 
John with Him and entered in where the damsel 
was lying. The presence of the father and the 



184 Pearls of Great Price 



mother is the presence of the good and truth of the 
internal mind. The presence of Peter, James and 
John, is the presence and operation of the three 
principles of the spiritual life — faith, love and the 
works of love. The bringing together of all these 
principles form the media through which the Lord 
acts in restoring to life the love of goodness in our 
minds. How wonderful it all is! These states con- 
stitute the medium of contact between the restoring 
life of the Lord and the affection that has become 
inactive. 

TAKING THE DAMSEL BY THE HAND. 

The Lord's hand is His power and the damsel's 
hand is the power, abiding in the affection of good, 
which has become inactive, of responding, to the 
Lord's touch. The Lord's hand and the damsel's 
hand — don't we see that they mean the inflow of the 
Lord's life into that in us which can receive it? It 
is always so. To raise us up the Lord must take us 
by the hand. He must take hold of the thing in us 
that will furnish a point of contact. 

Then He can say: "Talitha curni" — I say unto 
thee arise. And what an arising it is! It is the 
mind lifted in its aim, purpose and love above the 
level of the world. It is the mind restored to order. 
It is the affection of good free to live its life and 
open to the food — the Bread, that cometh down 
from heaven. 



XXII 

JESUS SENDING FORTH THE TWELVE. 
St. Mark vi. 1-31. 



One of the names by which the Lord, in His In- 
carnation, was to be known was "wonderful." This 
appellation, as it respects the people among whom 
the Lord grew up, is not strange. For in Nazareth 
where He grew up there was nothing in the external 
aspects of His life that differenced Him from others, 
so that when He entered upon His public ministry 
and began to manifest a wisdom and power that 
separated Him from ordinary men, the people of 
His own town and country wondered at the things 
He said and did. 

On this occasion, when He came into His own 
little city and on the Sabbath day began to teach 
in the synagogue, those who heard Him were 
astonished. He was a wonder to them. They asked : 
"From whence hath this man these things, and 
what wisdom is this which is given unto Him that 
even such mighty works are wrought by His 
hands?" He was to them the "wonderful." 

The years spent in Nazareth were years of in- 
ternal growth and preparation. Two great processes 

185 



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Pearls of Great Price 



were going on in the Lord at the same time. (1) 
There was the human growth of all His human 
faculties — an unfolding upward to the divine which 
dwelt in Him; and (2) the gentle coming down of 
the divine life and its entrance into His external 
consciousness through the opening doors of His 
human mind. Early in that wonderful childhood of 
the Lord there came the perception of the indwelling 
divine life. But these childhood perceptions were of 
a life far above His ordinary consciousness. But 
His growth upward was very rapid. So that in the 
dawn of His twelfth year He could say: "Wist ye 
not that I must be about my father's business?" As 
this growth went on, the divine descended lower and 
lower until ultimately it reached a plane where it 
could be expressed in and through the Lord's exter- 
nal mind. Then He entered upon His public 
ministry and began to manifest forth His glory — 
"the glory as of the only begotten son of God full of 
grace and truth." 

Here the gospel record begins, because the divine 
in the Christ had come into external manifestation. 
Up to this point nothing could be written. The 
people of His country had seen only His human 
side; and, as we are told, when He entered upon His 
ministry and began to show forth such marvelous 
wisdom and power, they could not add to their 
human idea of Him, the idea of His internal 
divinity. 



Pearls of Great Price 



187 



THE SENDING FORTH OF THE TWELVE. 

The Lord's twelve disciples, like the twelve sons 
of Jacob, stand for all the goods and truths consti- 
tutive of the church. The church is not a mere 
ecclesiasticism — a thing outside of man. It is the 
kingdom of God; and the Lord said: "The kingdom 
of God is within you." The church is formed in 
man by the union of good and truth. An individual 
man, in whom the work of regeneration is progress- 
ing, is the church in the least form; and when a 
number of such individuals come together for the 
purpose of worshipping the Lord and to be in- 
structed in the doctrine which the Lord gives for 
the guidance of life, they form the church in the 
larger form. 

This coming together of individuals in whom the 
church is being formed calls of necessity for some 
form of organization; but we must never make the 
mistake of confounding the organization with the 
church. The organization is a human agency. It 
can never be more perfect than the finite minds that 
make it; but the church is of the Lord, formed in 
man of the divine principles of goodness and truth 
revealed by Him. 

The principles constitutive of the church have to 
be learned. We are not born into a knowledge of 
them, but only with the capacity of learning them 
from the Lord's Word in which they are contained. 



188 Pearls of Great Price 



The memory must be stored with them. This capac- 
ity of learning heavenly principles of life and of 
afterwards ordering life by them, which every child 
has, affords parents in the home and teachers in 
the Sunday school, the blessed opportunity of co- 
operating with the Lord and the angels in their 
endeavor to implant the principles of the church in 
the child-mind. This work done, there comes a 
time when the Lord calls all these goods and truths 
to Himself. This is the spiritual meaning of the 
Lord calling unto Him His twelve disciples. For it 
is only as one's knowledge of good and truth is 
called out of the memory, where it has been stored 
as mere memory knowledge, into conjunction with 
the Lord in the internal mind, that it can be sent 
forth vitalized with His life, to do for one the per- 
sonal work of reformation and regeneration. So 
long as one's knowledge of good and truth is a thing 
of the memory, it is really outside one and has no 
vital connection with the Lord. The goods and 
truths in the memory must be called by the Lord 
to Himself. 

When this takes place the Lord can send them 
forth. This is a most important teaching. Mere 
memory knowledge does not gift life with a heavenly 
quality. ''Though I possess all knowledge and have 
not charity I am nothing." When the Lord called 
the twelve unto Himself, He sent them forth "by 
two and two." What did this mean? It meant that 



Pearls of Great Price 



189 



we cannot be reformed and regenerated by good 
alone, nor by truth, alone. Truth alone is cold and 
unproductive. It is like light in the time of winter. 
Truth ma}^ make us intellectual ; it may develop us 
into doctrinal gymnasts and the church into a 
doctrinal gymnasium, but standing alone, truth is 
unable to produce spiritual life. This is not said in 
any sense as a disparagement of the importance of 
truth — nor in any sense to be understood as under- 
valuing the importance of true doctrine. Far from 
this. We must learn the truth, we must study the 
doctrine revealed to us, but something more is 
needed. Truth alone is faith, faith alone. Nor can 
one, on the other hand, be reformed and regenerated 
by good alone. Good is mere heat. The religion of 
mere good is a wild emotionalism. It has no spiritual 
intelligence. It is a mood — a mere matter of feeling. 
It is unstable, because without intellectual and 
doctrinal guidance. 

Now, to teach us the danger of faith alone, on the 
one hand, and the ineffectiveness of good alone, on 
the other hand, the Lord sent forth the disciples 
"by two and two." There must be truth and there 
must be good. There must be faith and there must 
be charity. Good in the will and truth in the under- 
standing, must go forth together in order that one 
may be regenerated and have formed in one's mind 
the kingdom of God. The disciples must go forth 
"by two and two." 



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POWER OVER UNCLEAN SPIRITS 

The Lord literally gave power to the disciples 
over unclean spirits. The disciples were only the 
media of His power over them; for it was the Lord's 
divine sphere operating through them that cast 
them out. But this power given to the disciples over 
unclean spirits loses none of its significance by 
considering the disciples as representative of the 
goods and truths of the church. 

When called up out of the memory into vital con- 
junction with the Lord in the internal mind, the 
goods and truths of the Word and church are em- 
powered by Him to cast out of the natural mind the 
evils and falsities that infest it ; for these are the un- 
clean spirits. This really is the work that lies before 
the disciples, considered in their spiritual significa- 
tion. The spiritual mind does not need regeneration, 
It is pure, being formed of goods and truths im- 
planted in it as remains. It has never gone astray, 
But this is not true of the natural mind. The natu- 
ral mind is evil, because in it resides the heredity 
which every one has from parents, and even from 
remote ancestors. So far as the natural mind is 
concerned, we all come into life with tendencies to 
evils of all descriptions. Of course, we are not 
responsible for our heredity; but that does not 
change the fact that in our natural mind we are 
evil, This does not mean th&t we are born in sin, 



Pearls of Great Price 191 



"Sin is the transgression of the law/ 7 and the sinner 
is made, not born. 

Regeneration, then, is the divine work that we all 
need to have done in our natural mind. This is what 
the Lord meant when He said: "Except a man be 
born again, he cannot enter into the kingdom of 
God. 77 The natural mind is full of unclean spirits — 
of lusts, passions, appetites — dreadful things, that 
must be cast out; and this can be done only by the 
Lord 7 s power operating through the goods and 
truths of the Word and church, He sends them 
forth "by two and two 77 to do this work. 

THE WORK OF REPENTANCE. 

The way in which the disciples carried into execu- 
tion the Lord's power given to them over unclean 
spirits is summed up in a few words: "And they 
went out and preached that men should repent. 77 
The power of unclean spirits was broken by the 
power of the gospel of repentance. This is no less 
true of the work of the Lord 7 s disciples in the human 
mind. The goods and truths of the Lord 7 s Word, 
which form the church in man, empowered by the 
Lord, descend from the internal mind into the 
external mind; and when they come into the lower 
mind they preach repentance. Their very presence 
there is a distinct call to repentance. And repent- 
ance is to see the unclean things of the natural 
mind — its utterly fallen state, to acknowledge that 



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of ourselves, in our natural minds, we incline to evil, 
to confess it to the Lord, implore His forgiveness 
and then desist from evil and lead a new life, follow- 
ing the commandments of God. This is genuine 
repentance; and to this repentance every good and 
every truth of the Lord's Word calls us. 

There is no other way of casting out the unclean 
and unheavenly things of life. We cannot think our- 
selves out of evil into good — out of falsity into 
truth, nor can we become clean by denying evil. 
There is only one way, and that is by genuine 
repentance. And this repentance is a daily work. 
Each day the Lord's disciples in our minds call us to 
repentance. But if we practice repentance daily, it 
soon becomes a habit of the mind; and then when 
evil is suggested to us or awakened in us, we shall be 
able to say: "This is a sin against God, and I will 
not do it." 



Unless a man performs repentances, he remains 
in the sins in which he was born. To perform 
repentance is not to will evils because they are 
against God, and once or twice a year, to scrutinize 
one's self, to see one's evils, to confess them before 
the Lord, to implore aid, to desist from them, and 
to enter upon a new life. 



XXIII 

JESUS MINISTERING TO THE 
MULTITUDE . 

St. Mark vi. 32-56. 



It is said of the Lord: "He went about doing 
good." His ministry was crowded with work. He 
did the good that He was. The Word in Him was 
made flesh. It was transmuted into divine good and 
brought forth in service. "The Son of Man came 
not to be ministered unto, but to minister." We find 
in Him the supreme exemplification of the law of 
service. He was the incarnation of the divine love; 
and love does not live for itself but for others. The 
very purpose back of the creation, with man as its 
crown and apex, was that God might have objects 
outside Himself to love — to give Himself to. This 
is a law of the divine life. God is necessary to man 
and man is necessary to God. God could not exist 
as a solitary divine entity. Creation was a necessity 
arising out of the very nature of the divine love. 
The sun must shine. Its very constitution necessi- 
tates its shining. So God creates because love 
demands objects of love. Thus we are told that 
"the end of creation was a heaven of angels from the 

.193 



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human race.' 7 God needed men and women from 
whom to make angels. So He created, first the 
mineral kingdom, and on it, as a base. He created 
the vegetable kingdom, and on it, as a base, He 
created the animal kingdom, and on it, as a base, 
He created the human kingdom, and on it, as a base, 
He created the heaven of angels. 

This does not mean that angels are a race of 
being distinct from man. It means that using the 
material body of man and his natural plane of life 
which he acquires by birth into a natural world, the 
Lord builds the angel-man. And in the angel-man 
is found the end of the creation and a human recep- 
tacle of the divine love and wisdom of the Lord. 
And this whole process of creation in all its stage-, 
looks to one end — that God may have beings to 
whom He may give His love and by whom He may 
be loved in return. In a heaven of angels — man 
perfected, He rests of the travail of His soul and is 
satisfied. 

So of the Lord's coming into the world — it was to 
restore fallen man to God. He had broken, by his 
sin, the connection between himself and God. It 
could be restored only by the Lord's assumption of 
human nature, only by God entering the world of 
man's life through the gate of birth. Thus He came 
in the person of Jesus Christ, who was immediately 
conceived by the Divine life and born of the Virgin 
Mary. ,^ And in the wonderful life of the Christ, we 



Peakls of Great Price 



195 



see just what God's love is; for His life of service 
was God's life of love ministering to His children 
and forming the medium through which He could 
reach and restore them to Himself. God and Christ 
are not separate persons. Christ is the humanity, 
divinely conceived — the only begotten son, in 
whom the Father dwelt as the infinite divinity and 
through whom He functioned His life to man. In 
Jesus Christ, God gave Himself away to man. He 
Jaid down His life that He might take it up again in 
a redeemed and regenerated humanity. How won- 
derful it is! u God was in Christ reconciling the 
world unto Himself." Christ's life was God's life of 
love lived in the world. Thus He said: "He that 
hath seen Me hath seen the Father," 

THE MIRACLE OF THE LOAVES AND FISHES. 

This miracle was wrought in a desert place. This 
of itself is significant. It represented the state of the 
church at that time. The church which was estab- 
lished among the Jews was in a state of consumma- 
tion. Very little of good and truth remained; for the 
leaders in the church had made void the command- 
ments of God by the traditions of the elders. The 
church was therefore in a desert state spiritually. 
So that the natural environment of the miracle — 
the desert place, fitly represented the inward state 
of the church. Of course outwardly this state of 
the church was not apparent; for one of the marked 
things about the consummation of the church is, 



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that when the consummation takes place, the out- 
ward state of the church does not exhibit it. The 
reason for this is that as the inward life of the church 
perishes, there is always an increase of externals — a 
great activity in outward things. Everything seems 
to be flourishing. This was true of the Jewish 
Church. The temple service was maintained in all 
its pomp and splendor. The altars blazed with the 
morning and evening sacrifices, outwardly there 
were no signs of decay. But inwardly the state of 
the church was very different. It was in an utterly 
devastated state — a mere form out of which had 
gone the true soul and spirit of genuine religion. It 
was a desert. 

Eobed and mitred priests — vested choirs and 
burning candles and crowded pews are not in them- 
selves signs of inward life and power. Too often 
they are signs of inward death. The church's life is 
internal; and when the internal of the church dies 
i1 is in a state denoted by the desert place no matter 
how gorgeous may be its external, nor how crowded 
its pews. But when the church as a dispensation of 
religion comes to its end and becomes a desert 
place, the Lord goes to the desert place; for there 
He is needed. And there He finds much people. 
How 7 significant ! The people who come to find Him 
in the desert place, are the remnant. And this rem- 
nant are indeed "much people." It was so then, and 
it is so now. They are the simple good. They come 



Pearls of Great Price 



197 



out of "all cities" — from every conceivable form of 
belief. 

They are through with the old dead formalism — 
through with the old beliefs — a great multitude. 
They are sheep without a shepherd. The Lord's 
new church today must go to this same desert place 
and minister to this multitude; for we must remem- 
ber that they are sheep. The goats stay away. And 
sheep are all who have good affections — things in 
them that respond to the Lord's appeal. And this 
remnant is the nucleus of the new church which 
succeeds the old. It was so in the days of the Lord's 
life on earth and it is so in this day of His coming 
in the Word. 

It is said of the Lord: "And Jesus when He came 
out saw much people and was moved with compas- 
sion toward them . . . and He began to teach 
them many things." The true church is the Lord's 
mystical body. He acts through it. So that the 
compassion of the Lord is the love which He today 
feels in His divine human heart for those who are 
sheep without a shepherd. His body, the church, 
must have this love of souls if it would gather the 
shepherdless sheep into the sheep-fold of Him who 
said: "I am the good shepherd." Is not this one of 
the things that we lack? Really, we cannot draw 
men and women to us and to what we stand for, by 
cold intellectual presentations of truth. From the 
Lord's love in our hearts, we must love human souls 



198 Pearls of Great Price 



— have the Lord's compassion on the multitude. 
But we must do more than have compassion on 
them. We must teach them. It is said of the Lord: 
"And He began to teach them many things." Souls 
must be loved, but they also must be taught. The 
remnant need teachings. Whoever fails to teach the 
distinctive doctrines of the church proves false to 
his sacred commission. Jesus taught the people. His 
New Church must be a teaching church. 

THE LOAVES AND FISHES. 

The multitude were hungry. Outward hunger is 
the symbol of the deeper hunger of the soul for the 
bread of life. The five loaves and the two fishes! 
They stand for the remains of good and truth. 
Saint John, in his account of the miracle, tells us 
that there was there a lad with the loaves and fishes. 
This lad stands for the state of childhood in which 
remains — things good and true, are implanted. That 
which makes the remnant capable of receiving the 
life of the Lord is the remains of childhood, the way 
to which has not been closed by a state of confirmed 
evil. With such the lad with the loaves and fishes is 
always present. 

These remains , however, must be brought to the 
Lord, by turning them to Him as the author of 
them. They must be acknowledged as the Lord's 
own. Nothing that is proper to man's selfhood can 
receive the Lord. He must come into what is His 
own in man. What a wonderful doctrine this is: 



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199 



It opens to us the wonderful provision the Lord 
makes for man's salvation, for if these good and true 
things were not stored up during childhood no one 
could be saved. 

The office of the disciples in bringing the loaves 
and fishes to the Lord is the office of the church in 
its leading men to turn their minds to the Lord so 
that He may flow into the good and truth which He 
stored up in them. "Bring them hither to me" is 
w T hat the Lord is saying to us today. The church's 
appeal must be made to these things of heaven in 
men. This is what is meant, in the spiritual sense, 
by the Lord's command to the disciples to go forth 
and preach the gospel to "every living creature." 
Bringing the loaves and fishes to the Lord is the 
awakening of these remains and the acknowledg- 
ment of Him as their source. 

The Lord taking the loaves and fishes and looking 
up to heaven and blessing them represented the 
opening of the spiritual mind — the heaven within, 
and the descent from the divine love, of the life 
which gifts the good and truth stored up during 
childhood with increase to the feeding and satisfac- 
tion of the soul. 

Think of the multitude sitting in ranks, by hun- 
dreds and fifties! What a picture it is! Seated in 
companies of hundreds and fifties, the multitude 
represented the orderly arrangement of human 
minds for the reception of the Lord's life. Sitting is 



200 



Pearls of Great Price 



a bodily posture that stands for a state of reception 
in the will. Here is the point : The will must receive 
the Lord's life, and to do this it must be brought into 
a proper state or form. 

Then the Lord gave the loaves and fishes to the 
disciples to distribute to the multitude; and in doing 
it He symbolically set forth the truth that goodness 
and truth are communicated through heaven and 
the church and are thereby accommodated to all 
states of human reception. 

"And they did all eat and were filled." What a 
wonderful miracle! Yes, but it is not difficult of 
explanation. What is creation? Is it not an out- 
birth from the Creator? The order of creation is not 
from matter to spirit, but from spirit to matter — 
matter being only the covering of spirit. 

The Almighty God — the Word by which all 
things were made— did not exhaust His power in the 
creation of the world. The Word of God by which 
He created the world has not lost its creative power. 
Material forms may be created at any time and 
instantaneously, too, by an extraordinary influx of 
the divine truth through the spiritual cause-world 
into the dead natural world. The Lord's influx 
which is creative, flowed into the bread and fishes as 
the disciples gave to the multitude and the increase 
followed. 

But what of the spiritual meaning of the miracle? 
It is this: The good and true things stored up in 



Pearls of Great Price 201 

the mind during childhood, when called forth and 
brought under the divine influence, are capable of 
indefinite increase. Material things wear out by 
constant use. Spiritual things are multiplied and 
constantly increased by use. Begin to make use of 
the truth you know — give it away, and the more 
you use it the more you have to use, the oftener you 
give it away, the more truly do you possess it, and 
that with increase to all eternity. This law of 
increase is what is meant by the twelve baskets of 
fragments that were taken up. 

There was more left after the multitude had been 
fed than was brought to the Lord in the beginning. 
It is ever so. The more of good and truth the church 
gives to hungry souls the more there is left to give. 
The more of good and truth the human mind appro- 
priates the more fragments remain to be gathered 
up into the receiving vessels of the mind— the 
baskets of the miracle. "Great and marvelous are 
thy works, thou King of Saints. " 



A spiritual man acknowledges spiritual and 
celestial truth and good, but he does so from faith, 
from which he also acts, but not so much from love. 
A celestial man believes and perceives spiritual and 
celestial truth and good, and does not acknowledge 
any other faith, than that which is from love, from 
which he also acts. — Arcana. 



XXIV 

THE EASTER LESSON, 
I Cor. xv. 50-58. 



It is said of the Lord: 'Tn Him was life and the 
life was the light of men." The Lord Himself said: 
"I am the resurrection and the life." St. Paul says 
of the Lord: "He was declared to be the Son of God 
by the resurrection from the dead." In the book of 
Revelation, the Lord says of Himself: "I am He 
that liveth and was dead; and behold I am alive 
forevermore." These passages from the Holy Word 
of God open to us the most wonderful truths; and at 
this season, the great Easter Festival, when the 
church is seeking to turn men's minds away from 
absorption in worldly life to a contemplation of the 
soul and its immortality, it is incumbent upon the 
New Church, which is in possession of the Lord's 
own disclosure of the nature, constitution and ever- 
lasting life of the human soul, to bring forth for the 
instruction and comfort of her children and of all 
earnest hearts, the blessed doctrine the Lord has 
revealed on this all important subject. 

There is sweeping over the world a tremendous 
wave of spiritism. Many prominent men are 

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203 



becoming deeply interested in it and are yielding 
their minds to it. Conan Doyle has recently de- 
clared the most unqualified faith in it, and his 
article in the Metropolitan Magazine has been read 
by thousands, and will, of course, have weight with 
many minds. In his portrayal of the steps leading 
to his conversion to spiritism, there is not a single 
reference to the New Church, nor to him through 
whom the Heavenly Doctrines of the church were 
given. It cannot be that Conan Coyle is ignorant 
on this point. It must be that there is something 
connected with the writings of the New Church 
that discounts them in his mind. What is it? With- 
out doubt it is that the writings of the New Church 
teach the Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, the inspir- 
ation of the Bible and the necessity for the work of 
personal regeneration. These are the stumbling 
blocks to the natural man. 

To simply learn through mediums that one con- 
tinues to live as man after the death of the body, 
and to come to acknowledge the immortality of the 
soul may be a piece of pleasing information; but 
such knowledge of itself is of little importance. It 
leaves the quality of life unchanged; for it has noth- 
ing in it that saves the soul here and hereafter. 
Spiritism therefore can do nothing for the spiritual 
enlightenment and uplift of the world. It is of the 
natural and carnal mind — an utterly disorderly 
thing. The New Jerusalem is the picture God gives 



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us of the new dispensation of the Christian church. 
And while sublimely beautiful and wonderful things 
are revealed in the church writings in regard to the 
spiritual world, yet they are subordinate, as com- 
pared with the great bod}- of Christian theology 
contained in the writings of the church. 

The New Christian church is founded on the 
great bed-rock of the Incarnation and Divine 
Humanity of Jesus Christ ; and its coming depends 
upon an intelligent reception of the doctrine that 
Jesus Christ, in His Glorified Humanity, is not only 
divine, but the only God of heaven and earth. If the 
writings of the New Church did not contain this one 
supreme doctrine they would be received by thou- 
sands upon thousands. But if the Lord is denied 
there can be no church. The belief in the life after 
death, in order to have a regenerative value, must 
be related to the Lord. Apart from the acknowledg- 
ment of Him and of the Holy Word it has no power 
over life. One may learn from spiritism that one 
carries one's life into the spiritual world, and that 
he should cultivate virtues of life here in order to be 
comfortable after death. 

But what is this? Is it shunning evil because it is 
sin against God? Is it not just what the natural 
man does here? He avoids evil practices because he 
wants to feel comfortable and have the respect of 
the community. This leads to morality, but it is 
far away from spirituality. Now, that is all spiritism 



Pearls of Great Price 205 



proposes to do. It is wholly unchristian; and while 
posing as something spiritual, is altogether natural 
— appealing only to the natural man. 

THE RESURRECTION OF THE LORD. 

Saint Paul wrote to the Corinthians: "If Christ be 
not risen then is our preaching vain, and your faith 
is also vain. 7 ' That which banded the disciples 
together — that which sent them forth to preach the 
gospel, was not the fact of the Lord's passion, but 
His resurrection. After His passion, they returned to 
their homes heartsick and disappointed. They 
thought it was He that would redeem Israel, but 
alas! they were mistaken. He had gone down in 
death. But later on they found Him alive. He came 
to them so manifestly that they could have no doubt 
of His resurrection. He mingled with them, con- 
versed with them, and ate with them. They knew it 
was He. This fact of His resurrection, was what put 
courage into their hearts and sent them forth boldly 
to "preach Jesus and the resurrection." 

The older theologians conceived of Christ's resur- 
rection as the return of His human soul into its 
physical body which was in some mysterious way 
changed into a glorified physical body. We must 
remember that the doctrine of the Divine Human- 
ity is entirely foreign to the thought of the old 
theology. The old theology conceived of Christ's 
humanity as the humanity of a perfect man. It had 



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no idea of a Divine Humanity. Christ today, 
according to the old concept of Him, is a glorified 
human being hypostatically united to the Eternal 
Son of God. The older theologians did not conceive 
of Him as God-man, but as God and man. His 
Godhead, in the old thought, was the Godhead of 
the Son of God born from eternity, and His human, 
the human taken in the womb of the virgin, united 
eternally with His divinity. 

This old concept is far removed from what we 
know as the doctrine of the Divine Humanity. 

The Christian teaching as given in the doctrine of 
the New Church is, that Jehovah in all the fulness 
of His Godhead, assumed the human through the 
virgin Mary. This human was not simply a physical 
body. It was a spiritual structure involving a spirit- 
ual mind from heaven, a natural mind from the 
world of spirits and a limbus and physical body from 
the virgin mother. Within, above, and interior to 
these distinct planes of life from heaven, the world 
of spirits and the human mother, was the divine 
life itself, from which the human of the Christ was 
begotten. 

Now, the glorification of Christ consisted in the 
descent of the divine life or Jehovah, into the planes 
of life taken from heaven and the world of spirits, 
by which process their finiteness was removed and 
replaced by what was divine from eternity, thus 
forming a Divine Humanity on the planes of heaven 



Pearls of Great Price 207 



and the world of spirits. This means that in the 
glorification of the Lord, the Divinity was humanized 
and the humanity deified. 

At the time of the crucifixion this work of glorifi- 
cation was finished; for "by the passion of the cross 
the Lord subdued the hells and fully glorified His 
humanity." But the material body, because it is on 
a plane subject to influx from hell, must share in this 
descent of the divine life and be glorified, that the 
bodies of men on earth might be protected against 
the destructive principle of the hells. Thus we are 
told that the Lord, different from a mere man "arose 
with His whole body." This, of course, does not 
mean that matter was transmuted into divinity, for 
such a thing is unthinkable. It means that the 
divinity came in and down to the planes of the 
body, eliminating the matter of the body but 
replacing it with divine substance on the same 
plane. Thus the Lord arose with His "whole body" 
glorified, in the same sense that the degrees of life 
from heaven and the world of spirits were glorified, 
by divine substances coming in and being cast in 
the moulds of the body. He arose with a Divine 
Natural Body. Thus He became Jehovah on all 
planes, even as to flesh and bones. 

This was the resurrection of the Lord. He is the 
God-man. In Him God is man and man is God. 
This was what the Apostolic Father in the heavenly 
council meant when He said: "It was and is the 



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faith of the Apostolic church that the Lord's divine 
is human and His human divine. " 

THE RESURRECTION OF MAN 

The Lord said : "Because I live, ye shall live also." 
Man is essentially a spiritual being. He is formed of 
the substance of a distinctly spiritual world. He is a 
soul — a spiritual body. — He is not a product of 
nature. He is a spiritual being, and while in 
nature, is not of nature, and has complete trans- 
cendency of nature. His material body is really no 
part of him. It is only the machine which he, as an 
organic spiritual being, uses — a structure, of matter, 
through which he functions his life in the material 
world. 

He, however, is not life, but only the highest re- 
ceptacle of life from the Lord who is life and whose 
life is the light of men. 

Man cannot die. For him there is no death. The 
outer body is not the man. The material body does 
not die, for the reason that it has never lived. It is 
dead, for neither life nor sensation can be claimed 
for matter. What we call death is simply the with- 
drawal of the spiritual body from the natural and 
man's conscious entrance upon his life in the spirit- 
ual world. He does not, strictly speaking, change 
worlds; for as a spiritual being, ,he is always an 
inhabitant of the spiritual world. What we call 
death is simply the removal of the outer structure 



Pearls of Great Price 



209 



through which he functioned in nature, and the 
elevation of his consciousness to the higher plane; 
and then he finds himself in a substantial body and 
in a real and substantial spiritual world. 

How strange it is that the only created being that 
cannot and does not die, should live in daily fear of 
death! 

The resurrection is man's conscious entrance into 
life in the spiritual world. It is man's birth from a 
lower to a higher plane of life. He loses nothing, 
He wakes up unharmed. He is the same man. The 
only thing that has happened to him is that he no 
longer carries around with him a material body. He 
is a man still in every particular. What we call 
death is only the gate through which we pass into 
the higher world and life. 

This is the great doctrine the Apostle sets forth in 
this chapter of his epistle to the church in Corinth. 
He says: "There is a natural body and there is a 
spiritual body." He says: "Now this I say brethren, 
that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of 
God." He is teaching the Corinthians the doctrine 
that life is triumphant — that death is swallowed up 
in victory — that in Christ's resurrection we all have 
the assurance of life beyond the grave. 

THE SPIRITUAL WORLD. 

A material body calls for a material world as a 
suitable environment. So a spiritual body calls for a 
spiritual world as a suitable environment, 



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Thus, in the doctrines of the New Church, the 
spiritual world has been disclosed. It w r as and is 
created by the Lord through the medium of a 
spiritual sun. It is a distinctly spiritual world. It is 
real and substantial — a world of spiritual substance 
— a perfect environment of human souls. It has its 
geography and topography. It is the cause-world. 
Through it, influx from God passes to all material 
forms of life in the material world. It is not in 
nature, yet it is contiguous w r ith nature. It exists 
on a discreetly higher plane. It contains its own 
kingdoms, resembling the kingdoms of nature, but 
not material. It is the real world of which this 
nature world is only the reflection. 

It is divided into three distinct regions — heaven, 
hell and the intermediate state, or world of spirits. 
These are spiritual places in the spiritual world. 

The world of spirits — the middle world, is the 
place into which all come after what we call death. 
It is the hades of the New Testament, and is the 
scene of judgment and the place of instruction. All 
wake up in this intermediate state. 

There each one's inner life unfolds — there the 
ruling love manifests itself. This is the judgment — 
the opening of the book of human lives. There the 
internal life and the external life are harmonized. 
There one drops the things one has never interiorly 
loved whether they be good or evil. And w 7 hen this 
process has been gone through, the evil seek their 



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211 



like in hell and the good are instructed in the laws of 
the higher life and enter into the joys and uses of 
heaven. Hell is a state of self-love. Heaven is a 
state of unselfish love and service. Each is the out- 
come of the ruling love. No Easter lesson can bring 
to human souls the mighty meaning of the great 
festival unless it is based on these divinely revealed 
facts concerning the Lord — the constitution of the 
soul and the nearness and reality of the spiritual 
world. 



XXV 

JESUS SETS MEN FREE. 
St. Mark vii. 1-37. 



Our Lord said of himself: "I am the way, the 
truth and the life." He also said: "And ye shall 
know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." 
He said: "I am come that ye might have life, and 
have it more abundantly." 

These statements show T that the Lord's mission 
was to lift men out of their littleness and narrow- 
ness into broadness of vision and bigness of life. 
But history and observation confirm the fact that 
every new truth — every high ideal of life — every 
new conception of duty, has to struggle for its 
existence and wait for recognition. The human 
mind tends to settle down and to be satisfied with 
things as they are — to move along the line of least 
resistance — to let things alone. This feeling is 
native to the great majority of men. But if this 
were allowed to continue from age to age the world's 
progress would be blocked. Thus in the Lord's 
divine providence there arise men of vision — men 
of ideals — men who see in advance of their age, 
who announce new interpretations of the truth — 

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Pearls of Great Price 213 

deeper views of duty and who seek to lift their 
fellows to higher planes of life and action; but in 
doing so they suffer and are misunderstood. Often 
they undergo much persecution, especially from 
those whose authority and emoluments would be 
disturbed by an acceptance of the new truth. 

This has been true of the scientific world; and it 
has been especially true of the religious world. New 
truth, when once accepted, calls for a corresponding 
new adjustment of thought and life; and those who 
are satisfied with the old regime are always ready to 
impose obstacles to the progress of what is new. 
The Lord had to meet this condition. The church 
among the Jews was in a state of utter consumma- 
tion. The Talmud had displaced the divine law, 
and the traditions of the elders the commandments 
of God. 

The Pharisees, especially, were devoted to 
tradition. Religion, with them, was a routine 
— a series of external acts that had nothing what- 
ever to do with the purification of the inner 
life. The washing of cups and pots, brazen vessels 
and tables was a ceremony to which they attached 
the greatest significance; but the weighty matters 
of the divine law — the law of God — they had no 
regard for. 

Coming as the Word made flesh — coming in 
perfect fulfilment of the prophecies, the Lord 
brought to bear on all these mere external things — 



214 Pearls of Great Price 

these traditions of the elders, the light of the eternal 
truth. He utterly ignored them. He completely 
exposed them and revealed in all its hollowness and 
hypocrisy the life that the Pharisees lived. How 
scathing was His denunciation of them and their 
pious shams! He said: "Well hath Isaiah prophe- 
sied of you hypocrites, as it is written, this people 
honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far 
from me." 

The Lord revealed a new standard of life. He 
gave a new criterion of judgment with respect to 
what constitutes the religious life. He called men to 
reality and condemned all the subterfuges by which 
the religionists of that day sought to excuse them- 
selves from obedience to the divine law. 

He was, of course, hated and persecuted, because 
the new religion He opened to men called for inward 
repentance and purity of heart. They, the rulers of 
the church, had no place in their minds for the 
truths of the gospel. The concepts — the doctrines, 
He taught, involved a new adjustment of life; and 
this they were not willing to make. But there was a 
remnant left in the church who were capable of and 
willing to accept the higher truth; and in them and 
of them He formed the Christian Church. But it 
required centuries for men's minds to open in any 
general way to the higher Christian law and ideal. 
But under the light of this new dispensation of 
Christianity, we are learning — men everywhere are 



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215 



learning that religion is not a creed, not a mere 
routine — not a mere ceremony, but an inward life — 
an inward acknowledgment of God and the shun- 
ning of evil because it is sin against God. 

THE WITHOUT AND THE WITHIN OF LIFE. 

The inside and outside of life — how wonderful is 
the truth here set forth! "There is nothing from 
without a man, that entering into him, can defile 
him, but the things which come out of him, those 
are they which defile the man." In the church 
writings, the Lord has given us a clear exposition of 
this parable; and we cannot do better than to quote 
His own explanation of it: "The words of the para- 
ble are thus to be understood : All things, whether 
they be false or evil, which flow in from what is seen, 
or from what is heard, into the thought, or into the 
understanding, and not into the affection of man's 
will, do not affect and infect the man, inasmuch as 
the thought of man's understanding, so far as it does 
not proceed from the affection of his will, is not in 
the man, but out of him, wherefore it is not appro- 
priated to him." In order to understand this we 
must know something of the relation existing be- 
tween the will and the understanding of the human 
mind. These two faculties are receptacles, the will 
of love and the understanding of wisdom; but in 
man, at the present day, the understanding is sep- 
arated from the will, so that it is possible for things 



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to flow into the understanding and not at the same 
time into the will, that is, truth may flow into the 
understanding and shine there as a beautiful light, 
but if love for it does not flow into the w T ill and con- 
join itself to it, the truth is really outside the man 
and does not change at all the real quality of his life. 
So on the other hand, things evil and false may enter 
the understanding from without, but if they do not 
meet with an affection for and delight in them in the 
will they are still really outside the man and do not 
affect nor infect his life. Neither truth nor falsity, 
existing merely in the understanding, is in a man's 
life. This is what is meant by the "without a man." 
"Out of the heart are the issues of life." For what is 
in a man's will is really in the man. When evil and 
false things flow into the understanding, but do not 
awaken in the will any delight, but instead aversion 
and a turning away from them, we may know that 
they are not in us. 

How useful to us is this knowledge: Evil unclean 
thoughts — how frequently are the sweetest and 
cleanest minds subject to their influx: And what a 
beautiful ministry to such infested minds it is to 
be able to bring to them a truth like this : It is only 
when one entertains with feelings of delight and 
affection, evil and unchaste things that'one opens 
the door and lets them into one's inner life. 

And this wonderful within — how closely and 
sacredly one should guard that sanctuary of the soul : 



Pearls of Great Price 



217 



"For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed 
evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders." 
These fearful things are within the unregenerate 
heart of man. They belong to the old and utterly 
fallen will — to the heart that is deceitful above all 
things and desperately wicked. And when they flow 
out into the understanding and there gain the con- 
sent of the intellect and from that consent go forth 
into the life, they defile the man. Here we may see 
how closely one must watch the within of life. 

In regeneration these evils of the within, these 
things that belong to the fallen heredity, and for 
which one is not held guilty, are stirred into activity 
by the devil and his crew; and then they flow into 
the understanding; but if one meets them there, and 
by the Lord's truth condemns and rejects them, 
they are cast out and one is purified. 

THE DAUGHTER POSSESSED OF AN UNCLEAN 
SPIRIT. 

The mother who came to the Lord beseeching His 
help on behalf of her daughter who had an unclean 
spirit, was a Gentile; but one who had some knowl- 
edge of the Lord. She therefore represents the 
Gentile state of mind, which is one that has in it a 
willingness to be led and instructed. Her daughter, 
possessed of an unclean spirit, stands for the affec- 
tion of truth, but from a ground that is not genuine, 
that is, not enlightened — such an affection as 



218 



Pearls of Great Price 



belongs to a well disposed but uninstructed mind. 
This daughter, in her affliction, types to us a state 
that is very common. For an affection for truth 
unless guided by the truth becomes the prey of all 
manner of false things, even of unclean things. 

The Lord at first appeared utterly indifferent to 
the mother's request, but surely there was a spirit- 
ual reason for this. His seeming indifference to the 
mother's prayer was no doubt for the purpose of 
creating in her a deeper fervency and faith, but even 
that must have a meaning. The Lord can answer 
our pi ayers only when we come into the state recep- 
tive of the answer. There was something that 
needed to be removed from this mother's mind. She 
needed to feel that humility of spirit that makes one 
grateful even for the crumbs. Reaching and 
awakening this state in her, the Lord said to her: 
"Go thy way, the devil is gone out of thy daughter. 
And when she was come to her house, she found the 
devil gone out." 

The actual devils the Lord cast out of those who 
had come under their power, stand for the evil and 
false things He now casts out of all who come 
humbly to Him imploring His power. He can make 
all life's affections sweet and clean. How beautiful 
it is to know that what He did He does! Every 
affection, good in itself, but oppressed by wrong 
things may be purified and restored, if only the 
mother love back of it is willing to eat the crumbs 



Pearls of Great Price 



219 



that fall from the table. True humility leads to 
greatness of life; for it opens the soul to the heav- 
enly influxes from above. "He that humbleth 
himself shall be exalted. " 

THE HEALING OF THE DEAF AND DUMB MAN. 

The ears of the body stand for hearing and 
obeying the Word of God. The tongue stands for 
the confession of the Lord, especially for the expres- 
sion of the truth in the life. 

Seeing the correspondence of these two organs of 
the body makes it easy for one to comprehend the 
spiritual significance of the Lord's miracle in restor- 
ing the hearing and speech of the man mentioned in 
this lesson. We are told that deafness stands for a 
state in which truth is not understood and conse- 
quently not obeyed. No one can obey what he does 
not understand. Therefore the Lord heals the deaf 
when He opens the understanding to understand the 
truth and quickens the will to obey it. He is doing 
this today wherever and whenever human minds are 
willing to be instructed in the genuine doctrine and 
meaning of the Word. He is loosening tied tongues 
— stammering tongues, wherever and whenever, life 
is willing to be obedient to His truth. 

But to effect this great work in human souls, He 
must take them aside from the multitude; for the 
multitude stand for the affections and thoughts of 
the natural mind, and these, by their very presence, 



220 



Pearls of Great Price 



preclude all higher things. To heal us, the Lord 
must take us aside from the multitude. 

More than that, the Lord must bring to us the 
particular truth that we need. That particular truth 
is what is meant by the Lord putting his finger into 
the man's ears. And the tongue touched by the 
Lord's finger, moistened with His spittle, what did 
it all mean other than a point of contact established 
between our life and the Lord's truth? 

The truth by which the Lord enables us to confess 
Him in our lives is the truth that has been lived by 
Him and that has His healing life in it. This is the 
Lord's spittle — truth humanized and brought down 
to human need. And so it is that the Lord sets men 
free and gifts them with ability to understand and 
obey and confess Him. What He did He does. 



Deaf means no perception of truth, and conse- 
quently no obedience. The deaf are those who do 
not perceive what truth is, and therefore do not 
obey it. The reason deaf has this signification is 
that hearing corresponds to both perception and 
obedience. In the Word by the deaf are also 
signified the Gentiles, who do not know the truths 
of faith. — Arcana. 



XXVI 

JESUS REQUIRES CONFESSION 
AND LOYALTY. 

St. Makk viii. 15, 21-38. 



The Lord had fed the multitude and they had 
departed. "And straightway He entered into a ship 
with His disciples and came into the parts of Dal- 
manutha." Here He met the Pharisees, who came 
forth questioning Him and seeking from Him a sign 
from heaven. The Pharisees were the ritualists of 
the Jewish Church. They were careful about 
external things, but had no regard for the internal 
life of religion. Wholly closed to all real spiritual 
things, they could not see in the Lord's person and 
ministry the evidence of His Messiahship and 
wished to be convinced by some startling phenom- 
enon. This the Lord utterly refused, saying to them ; 
"There shall no sign be given unto this generation." 

WHY JESUS REFUSED TO GIVE A SIGN. 

The Lord worked miracles, but He refused to give 
the Pharisees a sign from heaven. His refusal to 
give them a sign was not due to any lack of power to 
do so, for the Lord was God manifested in the flesh. 

221 



222 



Pearls of Great Price 



His refusal to show a sign to the Pharisees must 
have been based upon reasons lying deep in the very 
nature of the divine love. 

These reasons become apparent when we stop to 
consider the internal difference between a miracle 
and a sign. In the gospel, according to St. Matthew, 
it is recorded that immediately after witnessing 
one of the Lord's mighty miracles, the Pharisees, in 
the very face of it, asked Him to show them a sign 
from heaven. A miracle makes its appeal to the 
heart, while a sign, a startling natural phenomenon, 
makes its appeal directly to the understanding. A 
miracle touches the heart and helps the faith of 
those who are already in an affirmative state toward 
the truth, whereas a sign strikes the intellect and 
compels intellectual assent without affecting the 
will. 

Our Lord's miracles — such as the opening of the 
eyes of the blind, unstopping the ears of the deaf, 
the healing of lepers, the raising of the dead, the 
feeding of the multitude — do we not see in them 
works of divine benevolence? And do we not see 
that the spiritual purpose in the miracles them- 
selves, not only as it regards those who were the 
immediate subjects of them, but as it regards those 
who witnessed them, was to affect their hearts with 
a deep sense of the divine goodness? When this 
purpose could not be realized, the Lord even refused 
to work miracles, as in the case of His own country; 



Pearls of Great Price 



223 



for we are told that when He came into His own 
country, "He did not many mighty works there 
because of their unbelief." Miracles then — such 
miracles as are recorded in the Lord's Word, appeal 
to the heart and confirm the faith of those already 
predisposed to belief. Not so with a sign. It is a 
work of divine power having nothing in it to affect 
the heart, but is a direct appeal to the intellect , com- 
pelling faith. It is no part of the Lord's providential 
economy to compel man to believe the truth, nor to 
persuade his mere intellect in favor of it. As a 
matter of divine omnipotence, the Lord could 
exhibit before man's wondering gaze, every truth in 
a way that he would have to admit it; but if He 
were to clo this the faith produced would not be in 
the man, nor would it have a lasting effect upon his 
character and conduct. The heart would still remain 
selfish and self-seeking. True and saving faith is not 
created by external signs, but by the truth ration- 
ally seen and spiritually discerned. "Faith comes by 
hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." It does 
not come from without. It does not rest on any 
natural or even spiritual phenomenon. It comes 
from within, and is the gift of God to all, between 
whose souls and the truth there is a spiritual 
vibratory correspondence. It is indeed a fact that 
the divine truth must enter the understanding from 
without, as light enters the eye, but truth entering 
the mind from without must be met from within by 



224 Pearls of Great Price 



a love for it in order that a real faith in it may exist. 
"With the heart man believeth unto righteousness." 
It is only as the heart receives the truth into the 
bosom of its inmost love that faith is given and life 
made better. There must be created first a rational 
conviction of the truth. Mere dogmatizing never . 
creates this rational conviction. The mind must be 
free to weigh the evidence. A faith that is forced — 
a faith that depends for its existence upon some out- 
ward sign, is outside the man and is no part of him. 
It is a superinduction and passes away just as soon 
as the sign that produces it is removed, because it . 
does not rest upon rational conviction. 

This is a very important teaching. Whatever 
grow 7 s into enduring character must be inwrought 
and instructured in freedom and according to reason. 
There is but one way of obtaining spiritual faith, 
and that is by free investigation of the truth. For 
faith is not blind assent to dogma. It is the mind's 
clear vision of the truth and the heart's deep love of 
it. No sign — nothing that strikes and startles the 
mere intellect can produce faith. The truth cannot 
appeal to anything above itself. "Thy Word is 
truth." Truth is its own authority. The evidence 
it brings is in its own intrinsic nature and structure. 
The evidence of the truth is therefore internal. It 
does not rest at all upon the testimony of the senses. 
No sign in the sky can create faith. 

Physical science is not a gate-way to faith. Spirit, 



Pearls of Great Price 225 



ual faith comes from a knowledge and study of a 
class of facts entirely outside the range of the 
physical sciences. Science may confirm faith, but it 
can never confer it. Spiritual things cannot be 
physically demonstrated. Every truth is demon- 
strable on its own plane. This then is the internal 
reason why the Lord refused to give a sign to the 
Pharisees. 

THE BLIND MAN OF BETHSAIDA. 

The eyes of the body correspond to the eyes of the 
mind. St. Paul had this correspondence in view 
when he wrote: "The eyes of your understanding 
being enlightened that ye may know what is the 
hope of your calling, and what are the riches of the 
inheritance of the saints/' David prayed: "Open 
thou mine eyes that I may see wondrous things out 
of thy law." The eyes of the body are divinely con- 
structed windows through which the world enters 
the mind and out through which the splendors of 
the soul shine. Their noble use in the body corres- 
ponds to the noble use of the understanding as the 
seeing faculty of the soul. Blindness of eyes is then 
the symbol of a darkened and blinded understand- 
ing; for as natural light cannot flow into blind eyes, 
so divine truth, which is spiritual light, cannot flow 
into a blind understanding. How precious is the 
gift of understanding! Religion involves a rational 
understanding of the truth. Faith is spiritual sight. 



226 



Pearls of Great Price 



Deadly to every true conception of the religion of 
Jesus Christ is eve^ attempt to ignore the under- 
standing. The Lord's miracles of opening the eyes 
of the blind are therefore symbolical of the greater 
miracles He now works in opening blind under- 
standings to see the beauty and glory of the truth. 
Thus the opening of the eyes of the blind man of 
Bethsaida pictures to us the Lord's divine operation 
in opening human understandings to see Him in His 
Divine Humanity and in His light see light. 

Bethsaida was one of the cities the Lord men- 
tions in His woes. "Woe unto Bethsaida! for if the 
mighty works which were done in you had been 
done in Tyre and Sidon they would have repented 
long ago in sackcloth and ashes." 

We are told in the church writings that Bethsaida 
stands "for condemnation for the non-reception of 
the Lord." Find out the thing in ourselves that will 
not receive the Lord and we have at the same time 
identified Bethsaida in our minds. Man's self-life — 
his proprium — his ownhood, will not receive the 
Lord. Bethsaida therefore stands for the false 
concepts of the intellectual side of man's ownhood. 
This always rejects the Lord. Do we not now see 
why the Lord took the blind man by the hand and 
led him out of Bethsaida before He opened his eyes? 
A man must be led out of his intellectual conceits 
before the Lord can open his eyes to see the spiritual 
things of His Word and church. There are many 



Pearls of Great Price 227 

men who are capable of being led out — men who are 
not confirmed in falsity or whose falsities are not 
grounded in evil. The Lord comes to all such and 
taking them by the hand — taking hold of their 
power and willingness to follow Him, leads them out 
of Bethsaida. This is the first step. Until one is 
willing to let the Lord take his hand and lead one 
out of what is false one's eyes must remain dark. 
When the Lord had led the blind man out of the 
town, he opened his eyes by two distinct touches. 
At the first touch the man saw obscurely, but at the 
second touch he saw every man clearly. This 
literally happened. But the Lord works the same 
miracle today.. 

The Lord's first touch is the touch of reformation. 
We see obscurely, but the work has begun. We see 
the natural truths of the letter of the Word and 
begin to correct many wrong things in our life. .We 
see men as trees walking. We have something of 
inward perception, and it moves. But another touch 
is necessary to fulness of vision — the touch of 
regeneration. This fully opens our understanding 
and we see every man clearly — every truth of 
inward spiritual life distinctly, and thereafter follow 
the Lord in the regeneration, never going into 
Bethsaida again. 

THE GREAT QUESTION ANSWERED. 
As Jesus and His disciples journeyed into the 



228 



Pearls of Great Price 



towns of Csesarea Philippi, He asked them: "Whom 
do men say that I am?" It is remarkable that in 
answering the Lord's question, the thought of the 
men of His day reached no higher than the recog- 
nition of him as a finite man. Some thought He was 
John the Baptist; others thought He was Elias, and 
others that He was one of the prophets. This is ever 
the natural man's thought of the Lord. It is what 
men largely think of Him today. They are willing 
to accord Him a place among the world's heroes and 
prophets, but that is all. But the thought of His 
church must be different. It is different. The church 
knows He is the Christ. Peter, who stands for the 
true faith of the church, ever confesses Him as the 
Christ. But the Christ is the Son of God; and by 
His being the Son of God is meant that His Human, 
which was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of 
the* virgin Mary, glorified and eternally united to 
the Father, is divine — Jehovah on man's plane. 
This is the Christian doctrine concerning the person 
of the Lord. Drop out this doctrine and there is no 
rational answer to the question: "Who is Jesus 
Christ?" Drop out this doctrine and the whole field 
of ancient prophecy is without meaning. Drop out 
this doctrine and man is without a Redeemer, the 
* church a mere teacher of morality, the font without 
-significance, the altar without purpose, and the 
preaching a mere moralizing. Christianity is a 
divine religion because its founder is the Son of God 



Pearls of Great Price 



229 



— the Christ of the prophecies. The church is where 
the Lord is thought of and worshipped as the Word 
made flesh. His Human is divine — the visible God 
in whom is the invisible. And the church comes into 
power only when and where it holds this blessed 
truth aloft, "The Lord God omnipotent reigneth." 



XXVII 
JESUS TRANSFIGURED. 
St. Mark ix. 2-29. 



The Christian religion is divine because it is the 
religion of the Incarnation. Drop out of Chris- 
tianity the fact of the Incarnation and it is instantly 
shorn of its power and is taken out of its proper 
place and reduced to a mere system of ethics and 
has no more power to enter into human life and 
regenerate it than any of the ethnic religions. And 
yet, essential as this doctrine is to the Christian 
system, it is the very doctrine that at this day, is 
assaulted by the powers of darkness. The old 
theology has been practically abandoned, and in 
its passing, the doctrine of the deity of Christ has 
gone. It is true that men still speak of the divinity 
of Jesus, but by His divinity they do not mean His 
Godhead, but that He unfolded in Himself God — 
consciousness; and that it is possible for each one to 
attain to that state. This is the concept that enters 
into and moulds the various healing cults; and sad to 
say, this concept largely prevails in the churches. 
The work that lies before us today is that of bring- 
ing men to see that God and man are distinct from 

230 



Pearls of Great Price 



231 



each other — that God is life and man merely a 
finite recipient of His life. 

When one is brought to the acknowledgment of 
this truth, it is not difficult for one to see the fact 
and rationale of the Incarnation. For then it may 
be seen that the soul of Jesus Christ was the infinite 
life and not a created receptacle of life. Thus that 
He, in the inmost of His being, was life. This in- 
most divine life, dwelling in Christ, differenced Him 
from a child conceived and born of two earthly 
parents. This inmost life or love is the Father — the 
divine that came down from above and clothed 
itself with a human nature. 

THE MATERNAL HUMANITY. 

The human nature taken from the virgin mother 
was not made over into what is divine, but was 
gradually put away. Thus our Lord put off, through 
His temptations and victories, the maternal human 
and put on in its stead the Divine Human from the 
Father who dwelt in Him. Thus Christ ceased to 
be the son of Mary, and as St. Paul tells us, was 
declared to be the Son of God by the resurrection 
from the dead/' 

The glorification of Christ consisted in the com- 
plete change of substance in His maternal human- 
ity. It was finite and limited and involved the 
heredity of the human race. Because of this He was 
subject to temptation. But this maternal humanity 



232 Pearls of Great Price 

was laid aside; and as this was done the divine 
substance from within came down and was organ- 
ized into a Divine Humanity on the same plane. 
This wonderful process went on in the Lord from 
His infancy to His resurrection. He rose the divine 
Man, even as to His body and was Jehovah even as 
to His Humanity. In Him God is Man and Man is 
God. He is not two, but altogether one. In Him 
Deity was humanized and humanity was deified. 
This is the distinctly Christian doctrine of the Lord 
Jesus Christ. 

THE TRANSFIGURATION OF JESUS. 

One thing needs to be understood. The glory 
which the three disciples beheld on the mount was 
not the glory of the essential divinity in the Lord; 
for no angel, much less any man, can see God as He 
is. It was the glory of the Divine Humanity. In- 
ternally the Lord's humanity was divine from con- 
ception; for He did not have a human soul. His 
soul was the divine itself; and from the inmost 
divine, as from a centre, the process of glorification 
went on until the human was made divine externally 
— divine in ultimates, even as to flesh and bones. 
But this process was a gradual one. At the time of 
the transfiguration, the Lord's humanity had 
become glorified to a degree that it could be actually 
seen. We do not refer to the Lord's material body; 
for it was not the material body that the three 



Pearls of Great Price 233 

chosen disciples saw. They saw the divine human 
body that was formed within and distinct from the 
material body. And this they saw, not with the 
eyes of their natural body, but with the eyes of their 
spiritual body. The whole scene was in the inner 
spiritual world. The three disciples saw the Lord as 
He was seen by the angels. Ordinarily they saw 
only the body of flesh through which He functioned 
the divine life. How many mysteries this doctrine 
clears up to the thoughtful and serious soul! The 
Incarnation does not mean that God became an 
infant — that the infinite became finite. The Incar- 
nation made no change in God. He was still the 
infinite ruler of the universe. It means that the 
divine life created immediately from itself, a 
human form involving all human faculties, through 
which it might come to man and function the divine 
love and wisdom on his plane. As Christ opened the 
doors of His human mind upward to the divine, Je- 
hovah came in and down — the infinite life des- 
cended, in glorifying measures, putting away what 
was finite and limited from Christ's human mind, as 
He freely chose the life of the Father, until in the 
stead of the human from Mary there existed the 
Human from God. And this was what the three 
disciples beheld. They saw the glory of the only 
begotten Son of God, full of grace and truth. The 
Incarnation does not involve the thought that God 
left heaven and took up His residence among men. 



234 Pearls of Great Price 



The spiritual world is not separated -from the 
natural world by material space. It is above and 
within the natural world. Even finite beings as to 
their spirits, live in the spiritual world. Death does 
not mean that one leaves the natural, world and 
actually enters the spiritual world; for one is already 
an inhabitant of the spiritual world. When what 
we call death occurs, nothing happens except the 
casting aside of the material body, through which 
one has functioned one's life in the natural world, 
and one's conscious awakening in the spiritual 
world. One wakes up and becomes conscious of the 
world in which one was from the beginning. Death 
is a change of state, not a change of place. So God, 
by Incarnation, came into the world only in the 
sense that He took upon Him a material body 
through which He revealed and functioned His life 
on man's plane. He always filled the heavens with 
His glory. It was the Divine Human within His 
material body, yet transcending it, and visible to 
the angels, that broke in such dazzling splendor 
upon the spiritual vision of the three disciples. 

And the glory that the three chosen disciples 
beheld was not shed upon the Lord from a source 
outside Him. It was a glory that came into mani- 
festation from a source within Him. It was inherent 
in Him. We have all witnessed the power of the 
Lord's love and wisdom to transfigure human faces 
in those who receive and live the life of regeneration. 



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235 



How much more true this must have been of Him 
in whom the fulness of the Godhead dwelt bodily! 
The Lord's face shining as the sun, was the corres- 
pondential manner in which His divine human love 
manifested itself. His raiment, white as the light, 
was the correspondential appearance of the truth 
glorified in Him. The shining face and white rai- 
ment were then spiritual manifestations of the 
divine love and divine wisdom which the Lord had 
united in His Divine Humanity. He stood there, 
the glorified manhood — the Divine Humanity of 
God, the true object of worship to angels and to 
men. How sublime the vision is! How it furnishes 
the divine basis of the ancient Christian creed, now 
almost entirely forgotten, yet restored and made 
vital in the teaching of the Lord's New Church! 
Listen to it! "That in Him two whole and perfect 
natures, the Godhead and the Manhood were united 
in one person. " Does any one ask how to think of 
the Lord when he prays to Him? Here is the true 
vision of Him. He is to be thought of in the for?n in 
which He appeared to the three disciples. Here He 
is, revealed in His Divine Humanity — the all 
glorious divine Man, filling heaven and earth with 
His glory. He stands there, the visible God in whom 
is the invisible. And this visible God — this Divine 
Manhood, is the side of God that we may know, 
love, worship and adore. No one is able to go imme- 
diately to the Infinite, but only to the humanization 



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of the Infinite in Him who brings the Father forth to 
view. We cannot take the divine immensity by the 
hand. We cannot be conjoined with the Infinite. 
We must pray to and worship Him in whom the 
Infinite dwells. This is exactly what the Lord 
taught. He said : "No man cometh unto the Father 
but by Me." We are to approach the Divine Hu- 
manity. We must not separate in thought the 
divine from the human, nor the human from the 
divine. To quote the ancient creed: "That our Lord 
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is both God and Man; 
and although He is God and Man, still there are not 
two, but there is one Christ. He is one because the 
Divine took to itself the Human; yea He is alto- 
gether one; for He is one person. Since the soul and 
the body make one man, so God and Man are one 
Christ." (Ath. Creed.) 

How wonderful it is that amid all the falsifications 
of the Apostolic teaching this central doctrine of the 
personal oneness of. God and Christ should be pre- 
served. Today, the New Church stands almost 
alone in its faith in this ancient Catholic doctrine; 
but the time is coming when Christendom shall 
return to the ancient faith, made clear and rational 
by the explanation of it given by the New Church. 
MOSES AND ELI AS. 

Moses stands for the historical of the Word, for 
its history and its law. Elias stands for its pro- 
phetical portions. The presence of these two men on 



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237 



the mount stands for the wonderful fact that the 
Old Testament in its entirety treats of the Lord. 
Jesus Himself confirmed this; for after His resurrec- 
tion, and during the walk with the two disciples 
from Jerusalem to Emmaus, it is said that He, 
"Beginning with Moses, expounded unto them in 
all the Scripture the things concerning Himself/' 
Jesus Christ is the central figure in which all revela- 
tion centres — the one in whom all the dispensations 
culminate. "The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of 
prophecy." The whole Word treats of the Lord — 
His coming into the world. His temptations and 
victories and the ultimate glorification of His 
humanity. Moses and Elias talk with Him on the 
mount of revelation. But what of Moses and Elias 
on the mount of our own life? Are they not present 
with us? Do we not see how every inspired book of 
the Hebrew scriptures talks with Jesus? Is not its 
history, its law, and its prophecy glorified in Him 
in whom the Word was made flesh? Does not the 
law and the prophets join their voice and unite in 
the song of redemption? And has not that song 
whose very motive is the testimony of Jesus, thrilled 
our souls with its melody and reverberated with its 
glad triumph through the corridors of the temple 
of our spirits? Surely every Christian soul — every 
heart, on the mount of whose love, Jesus has been 
transfigured, has seen and heard Moses and Elias 
talking with the Lord. 



238 Pearls of Great Price 



JESUS ALONE. 

In one of the gospels we are told that when the 
bright cloud that overshadowed the three disciples 
faded away, "they saw no man save Jesus only/' 
Why this vanishing of Moses and Elias? The 
natural reason was the closing of the spiritual eyes 
of the three disciples; but there was a spiritual 
reason for the fact that in the end no man was there 
"save Jesus only." Jesus is the Divine Good itself. 
It is toward the attainment of that interior state in 
which we receive Jesus into our hearts as the Divine 
Good, that the letter of the law, history and 
prophecy of the Scriptures, and every doctrine of 
the church lead us. Then they are no longer matters 
of memory knowledge, nor of mere outward doc- 
trinal vision. This is the celestial state. Jesus as the 
Divine Good is then enthroned in our hearts. He is 
all in all. The Word, which He is, is in us as Christ 
glorified. Not that we are Christs — far from that, 
but He is the life of our life, giving us vision from 
within. We see Him and all things glorified in Him. 



Moses and Elijah were seen speaking with the 
Lord. No other could speak with Him when He 
was transfigured . . . than those who repre- 
sented the Word, for speech with the Lord is 
through the Word. — Swedenborg. 



XXVIII 

JESUS REBUKING SELFISHNESS. 
St. Mark ix. 30-50. 



"Never man spake as this man" was the answer 
brought back by those who were sent to arrest the 
Lord. There was a power in His words that they 
felt — a power that disarmed them. He stood on a 
higher level — a level to which they could not reach ; 
and while they had no explanation, either of His 
person or words, yet deep down in their souls they 
felt that a strange and mysterious power had laid 
hold of them. They dared not take Him. Now that 
the Lord has opened the spiritual sense of His Word, 
we who are permitted to enter that inner sanctuary 
of the Word see what it was that awed these enemies 
of the Lord — what it was that compelled them to 
the admission of His Divinity. For in the light of 
the inner meaning of the Word, one sees that the 
outward aspect of the Lord's life was really a symbol 
— revelation of a life that was divine and infinite. 
This inner and infinite life was God revealing Him- 
self to man. There were times in the earthly life 
of the Lord when this inner life and power were 
apparently indrawn. Then Jesus had experiences of 



240 Pearls of Great Price 



humiliation and temptation. In all these experi- 
ences the divine in Him was veiled from His human 
consciousness; and in these states, He spoke of the 
Father as if He were a divine person apart from 
Himself. Those who reading the gospel record of 
the Lord's life, see only this side of Him, fail to rise 
to the thought of Him as Divine. They see only the 
Son of Mary. But there was another aspect to the 
Lord's life — an aspect which takes Him away from 
all that is finite and limited. It is the side of His 
glorification. In states of glorification, He rose 
above the consciousness that belonged to Him as 
the Son of Mary, into the consciousness of the 
Divine which dwelt in Him. In these states of glori- 
fication, He identified Himself with the Father. It 
was while in these states that He said: "The Father 
and I are one." "Before Abraham was I am" "He 
that hath seen me hath seen the Father," Alter- 
nating between these two states, finally the process 
of glorification was completed. The human nature 
from Mary was put off and the Divine Humanity 
the Father was put on. And when this wonderful 
process was finished, the Lord became Jehovah as 
to His Humanity. 

The words that struck' such terror — such awe, 
into the souls of those who were sent to bring Him 
to the Scribes and Pharisees, were spoken while He 
was in states of glorification. They had in them a 
power no mere human words contained. Not only 



Pearls of Great Price 241 



were the Lord's words above all mere human words, 
but what He did was above all mere human doing. 
No man ever did what He did. The simple fact is 
that Jesus Christ was God manifested in the flesh. 
His life was a revelation of what God is. Jehovah in 
Jesus, bowed the heavens and came down; and what 
He did was what God was doing. This thought is 
the key that opens to rational minds the true 
understanding of the person of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. 

THE CHILD IN THE MIDST. 

The disciples did not, at first, comprehend the 
nature and character of the kingdom the Lord came 
to establish. They were at this time held in the 
Jewish thought of the kingdom. They were still on 
the natural plane, and in common with the Jewish 
church, thought of the kingdom of the Messiah as 
an earthly kingdom. This naturalistic conception 
of the kingdom was the ground of the dispute among 
the disciples as to who should be greatest in it. They 
were thinking of an earthly kingdom. They had no 
idea of a spiritual kingdom. And with this thought 
in their minds, each disciple desired to be greatest — 
to rule. None of them thought of serving. They 
were still natural men and were governed by the 
worldly ambitions of the natural heart. This love of 
rule — this desire to be greatest, is native to the 
natural man ; and it is not until the natural man in 



242 



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one is brought, by the work of regeneration, under 
the dominion of the higher spiritual man that one is 
willing to serve and to find the rewards of service in 
service itself. 

Our Lord, when their questioning w r as brought to 
Him, rebuked their worldly ambitions in a way that 
made a lasting impression on their minds. He took 
a little child and placed him in the midst of them, 
and then turning to His ambitious disciples said 
unto them : " Except ye be converted and become as 
little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom 
of heaven." What a lesson! The little child in the 
midst! That was the Lord's answer. The child in 
the midst! It meant that the love of dominion 
which leads men to strive for the highest places, 
really disqualified men from entrance into His 
kingdom. 

The Lord's kingdom on earth is His church; but 
His church is not a mere ecclesiasticism — a great 
organization. Of course there must be an ecclesias- 
ticism — an outward organization, for nothing can 
be accomplished without organization. But the 
organization is no more the church, strictly speak- 
ing, than the material body is the man. The church 
consists of the union of goodness and truth in man. 
This is what the Lord meant when He said: "The 
kingdom of God cometh not with observation, 
neither shall ye say lo! here nor lo! there, for 
behold the kingdom of God is within you." And 



Pearls of Great Price 243 



entrance into this kingdom is made through a 
spiritual conversion of life. The ruling love of life 
must be turned away from self to the Lord and 
from the world to heaven. As this process takes 
place in men they become as little children. They 
are born again; and in the life of that new birth, 
they become innocent and confiding, teachable and 
willing to be led by the truth. 

Coming into the church is something more than 
having one's name enrolled as a member of a church 
organization. It means the conversion of the soul 
to the Lord and a child-like dependence upon Him. 
It means that innocence, symbolized by the child in 
the midst, must become the inmost of all the graces 
of the soul. 

And in this spiritual kingdom, who is the 
greatest? The Lord in speaking of the Command- 
ments said: " Whosoever shall do and teach them, 
the same shall be called great in the kingdom of 
heaven." The child in the midst served to illustrate 
two things; namely the nature of the kingdom and 
the principle that was greatest in it. 

Innocence, the innocence of wisdom, is what 
admits us into the Lord's kingdom; and it is at the 
same time the quality that constitutes true great- 
ness in it. Heaven, both here and hereafter, dwells 
in innocence, so that where this quality of innocent 
life is deepest there heaven dwells in greater fulness. 
The child in the midst is then the picture the Lord 



244 Pearls of Great Price 



gives us of what is truly great. The things of inno- 
cence implanted in our minds in childhood and 
stored up as remains in our soul, are what in a very 
important sense is meant by the child in the midst. 
Remnants of heaven in one are the greatest things 
in one's life. The innocence that is in the heart of the 
angel — an innocence which leads to true humility, is 
the greatest thing in heaven. And innocence, a 
willingness to be led by the Lord — a willingness to 
serve other lives in no matter how humble a way, is 
the greatest thing in the church. These are the 
lessons the Lord teaches us by the child in the midst . 

OFFENDING ONE OF THOSE LITTLE ONES. 

These little ones that believe in the Lord are the 
qualities of innocence either in ourselves or in 
others, and to offend, or to cause them to stumble, 
is to wilfully pervert and turn aside from innocent 
life one who is faithfully trying to follow the Lord. 
It is also to pervert in one's self the principle of 
innocence by turning life away from the Lord to 
self. But the most helpful way of thinking of this 
lesson — of listening to the Lord's warning, is to 
regard the matter in relation to ourselves. 

Profanation is the most dreadful sin that one can 
commit. So dreadful is it that the Lord's providence 
constantly works to save us from it. For profana- 
tion is the actual mixture of good and evil, truth and 
falsity iri one's Uf§, This sin is possible only to those 



Pearls of Great Price 245 



who have really entered into the life of goodness and 
truth. A man cannot profane the truth and the good 
of the Word unless he has really entered into it. He 
becomes a profaner by receding from good to evil — 
from truth to falsity, and thus mixing them in his 
life. This is the sin against the Holy Spirit. 

The neck unites the head with the body and is the 
means of communication between the head and the 
body. The teaching is, that it is better for a man 
to remain in a state of confirmed evil and falsity, 
than to have the spiritual life formed in him and 
afterwards to recede from it and return to the evil 
life of his corrupt natural man. The Lord expressed 
this doctrine in correspondential language: "It were 
better for him that a millstone were hanged about 
his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of 
the sea/' To put the truth of this in a form that we 
can all understand : It is better for a man to remain 
confirmed in evil lusts and false persuasions, better 
for him never to have any communication opened 
between his internal man and his unregenerate 
natural man, better that he remain immersed in the 
falsities of hell than to be lifted out of evil and 
falsity, and then, in course of time, to return to 
them. For in such a case the last state of such a man 
is worse than his first state. This is so because it in- 
volves the sin of profanation. Hence we are told 
that it is a law of the divine providence that a man 
should not be admitted into the life of spiritual good 



246 



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and truth only so far as he can be kept in it to the 
end of his natural life in the world. But like any 
other law, this law is capable of being violated. 
Each one of us needs to be on guard lest we sin 
against the holiest things of life — lest we offend one 
of these little ones who believe in the Lord. Let us 
be thankful for our vision of the inner life, but never 
let us forget that constant care is to be taken and 
daily looking to the Lord to be done, lest by evils of 
life, we depart from the Lord. 

C UTTING OFF OFFENDING MEMBERS. 

The offending hand, foot, and eye — what do they 
stand for? We can all see that the Lord did not 
intend us to literally cut off the hand or foot, or 
pluck out the eye — what then did He mean? 

The natural mind is the seat of evil in man; and 
there are two sides to the natural mind — an internal 
side and an external side. The hands are the sym- 
bols of the power of ultimating the things of the 
internal side of the natural mind, and the feet of the 
power of ultimating in life the things of the external 
side of the natural mind. 

Thus the hand and the foot that offend, and for 
that reason must be cut off, stand for desires and the 
power of them, in both the internal and external 
parts of the natural mind that must be rejected. If 
it is the right hand the lust of evil is meant. If it is 
the left hand the lust of falsity is meant. The foot 



Pearls or Great Price 



247 



that must be cut off is the desire — the power of evil 
and falsity, of ultimating in daily life the things 
forbidden in the Lord's Commandments. These are 
acts of spiritual amputation which each one must 
perform. And the offending eye — what is it? The 
eye is the organ of intellect, and the intellect is the 
seat of thought. The offending eye is therefore an 
offending thought. This must be plucked out and 
east ^away from the mind. 



XXIX 



JESUS SETS NEW STANDARDS 
OF LIFE. 

St. Mark x. 1-31. 



As man falls away from internal and spiritual 
realities he gradually loses the consciousness of them 
and comes ultimately into materialistic concepts of 
life. This truth finds supreme illustration in the 
history of the Jewish Church. In the Jewish Church 
there obtained only natural ideas of God, religion 
and life. It was formed on the plane of the natural 
mind. In Tact it was not a church, but only the 
representative of a church. In a representative 
church, the Lord is connected with good states of 
mind in the people who form it; and whatever may 
be the outward form of the church, it establishes no 
direct point of contact with the Lord and heaven — 
the outward form being useful only in the sense that 
it ministers to the spiritual life as a quality in its 
members. This is not true of the representative of 
a church, such as the Jewish Church was. The Lord 
and heaven were associated with the externals of the 
Jewish Church, and associated with them because 

248 



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249 



they corresponded to and were representative of the 
things of genuine spirituality. It was a church 
among the people, not a church in them. Yet the 
Jewish Church served, by its correspondential and 
representative ritual, as a stay — a support, to 
heaven until the fulness of time, when the Word was 
made flesh. 

When the Lord came He formed a divine human 
plane of life in His humanity, by which He was able 
to reach all conditions of mankind. He became in 
His Divine Humanity, the Rock on which the 
church might securely rest. Thus the Christian 
Church, which succeeded the Jewish, became the 
channel through which He flowed with new life into 
the whole Body of Humanity. It became a repre- 
sentative church — a church in man, and the repre- 
sentative of a church— a church merely among the 
people passed away. 

As religion begins with the concept of God, the 
Lord therefore brought to the world in His Person 
and life a new concept of God. He did away with 
the tribal concept. He broadened the God-idea. He 
revealed God as the Universal Father, who loved 
and cared for all His children. And in this Christian 
concept of God, all human relations found a new 
interpretation and adjustment. He set new stand- 
ards of life for the world. This was the real signifi- 
cance of Christianity as the religion of the Incarna- 
tion. It moved on a higher level and formed in men 



250 



Pearls of Great Price 



a deeper and broader life. It developed a new type 
of man. 

THE ORIGIN AND LAW OF MARRIAGE. 

The Jewish church, being composed of natural- 
minded men, had no true spiritual idea of marriage. 
The law of divorce in the Jewish Church was not a 
divine law. It was a permission. This truth the 
Lord distinctly declared when the Pharisees said to 
Him: "Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement 
and put her (the wife) away." The Lord said: "For 
the hardness of your heart, he wrote you this 
precept; but from the beginning of the creation, 
God made them male and female. For this cause 
shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave 
to his wife. And they twain shall be one flesh . . . 
What therefore, God hath joined together let not 
man put asunder." In this reply the Lord re- 
established marriage on its original and true basis. 
In the marriage service in the Book of Worship, the 
officiating clergyman says to those who come to him 
for the solemnization of the union into which they 
are entering: "Beloved, marriage is a holy estate. 
It has its origin in the union of the Divine Love and 
the Divine Wisdom in the Lord, and it likewise sig- 
nifies unto us the union of the Lord as the Bride- 
groom and Husband with the church as the Bride 
and Wife." How explicit and comprehensive this 
statement is! Man and woman were created for 



Pearls of Great Price 



251 



each other. They are not material beings, but 
spiritual beings; and their union in marriage was 
intended to be spiritual like their nature and also 
eternal like their destiny. God made man in His 
own image and likeness. He alone of all created 
beings enjoys such dignity and distinction. His 
image and likeness, however, are not the same 
thing. Wisdom is the image of God. Love is the 
likeness of God. Here we come to the real spiritual 
basis of sex. The difference between man and 
woman is not confined to the body. A man is a 
masculine soul, and that which makes him such is 
the fact that he is created to be a form of wisdom. 
This is the ground of his masculinity, both in mind 
and body. He is the image of God. A woman is 
feminine in her very soul as well as in her body, and 
that which makes her feminine is the fact that she 
is created a form of love. This is the ground of her 
femininity, both in mind and body. Taking man 
then in his entirety — the Homo, he has a masculine 
side and a feminine side. He is male and female. 
A man as the form of wisdom is the image of God. A 
woman as the form of love is the likeness of God. 

This does not mean that a man is without love, 
nor does it mean that a woman is without wisdom. 
It simply means that in a man the understanding 
predominates and that his love is qualified by his 
intellect and that in a woman love predominates 
and that all her intellectual processes are qualified 



252 



Pearls of Great Price 



by her love. As the two halves of humanity, the 
male man is the image of God and the female man 
the likeness of God. 

Here is the ground of marriage. Love and wisdom 
are perfectly united in God. So wisdom in a man 
and love in a woman were designed to be so united 
in marriage as to be spiritually and eternally one. 
This oneness of the two in marriage thus becomes 
the image of the union of the Divine Love and the 
Divine Wisdom in the Lord. The marriage instinct 
arises out of the endeavor of wisdom to unite itself 
to love and of love to unite itself to wisdom. That 
is why marriage has its origin in the union of the 
Divine Love and Divine Wisdom in God. 

And two human souls whose union in marriage is 
the result of this united aspiration of soul, free from 
impure desires and worldly motives, are two souls 
and two bodies that God joins together; and their 
union is eternal. Each brings to the other what the 
other lacked and they are no more twain. They are 
one man created by marriage in the image and like- 
ness of God. 

What a holy estate marriage is when we see it in 
the light of this doctrine ! It is a spiritual union. It 
is that above all else. It is also a civil contract, for 
it is natural as well as spiritual. Marriage as we 
have described it, did not exist in the Jewish Church, 
and that was why divorce was so common among 
them. It is because this concept of marriage so 



Pearls of Great Price 253 



little obtains among men today that there are so 
many unhappy matrimonial connections. True and 
happy marriages can exist only in connection with 
true religion, where religion is ignored either by 
both or by one of the partners, their marriage is 
only an external relation, and fails to bring the deep 
satisfactions of life to the soul. The church has had 
revealed to it the true doctrine of marriage, and its 
duty is to make it known. For the love that makes 
marriage is a fundamental love. It is the holiest love 
given by the Lord to angels in heaven and to men on 
earth. The whole spiritual life of the church is 
involved in it — her present and her future; and the 
church must be true to the Lord and declare the 
whole counsel of God in regard to this holy estate. 

THE RICH YOUNG MAN. 

This young man addressed the Lord as "Good 
Master. " The deniers of the Lord's Godhead have 
seized upon the Lord's reply to the young man: 
"Why callest thou me good, there is none good but 
one, God," as a proof that the Lord Jesus repudiated 
the thought that He is divine. It is true that only 
God is good. The young man himself was ready to 
admit that, so that the Lord's question: "Why 
callest thou me good?" was really the Lord's declar- 
ation of His divinity. God alone is good, if I am 
only a pious Rabbi why do you call me good? The 
fact that you call me good is your admission of my 



254 



Pearls of Great Price 



divinity, for none is good, but one, God." This 
certainly is involved in the Lord's question: "Why 
callest thou me good?" It was not a refusal on the 
Lord's part to be called good; for He said of Him- 
self: "I am the Good Shepherd." 

The Lord's reply to the young man means, then, 
simply this: "You call me good. There is only one 
being who is good. That being is God. In calling 
me good you acknowledge that I am that being." 
The Lord Jesus Christ, as the Word made flesh is 
the only good being. All good is from Him. 

The Lord now turns to the young man's question : 
"What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life." 
In reply to this question, the Lord pointed out to 
him the teaching of the ten commandments. "Do 
not commit adultery. Do not kill. Do not steal. 
Defraud not. Honor thy father and mother." 

But the young man had kept these laws from his 
youth up. But how had he kept them? He had 
kept them as civil and moral laws. Here is the 
point : An atheist may keep the commandments as 
civil and moral laws. He is often ready to shun evil 
because it is evil, that is, because the practice of the 
evils forbidden in the ten commandments, would 
involve him and his reputation. He, by so doing, 
becomes a civil and moral man. He makes clean the 
outside of the cup and platter. He is governed by a 
mere worldly motive and policy. There is nothing 
wrong with the outside of his life. He has orderli- 



Pearls of Great Price 



255 



ness of conduct. But there is something radically 
wrong with the inside of such a life! And the Lord 
proceeds to point it out: "One thing thou lackest; 
go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to 
the poor, and thou shalt have treasures in heaven, 
and come, take up thy cross and follow me." It will 
be noticed in the Lord's reply to this young man — 
in the pointing out to him his great lack, that He 
did not tell him to begin by believing something, but 
by doing something. He lacked charity, not faith. 
Charity was the one thing needed to perfect his 
obedience. But what is charity? " The first thing of 
charity is to shun evils because they are sins against 
God," This the young man had not done. He had 
shunned evils because they were evils, not because 
they were sins against God. He had attempted to 
do good without first shunning evils as sins. "The 
second thing of charity is to do good because it is 
of God and from God." This he had not done. He 
had done good from himself. Spiritually considered, 
the riches the young man was commanded to sell, 
were the riches of his own goodness. These he must 
sell. The same is true of all who would inherit 
eternal life. God alone is good; and no one can do 
good that is really good until he first shuns evils as 
sins; for until one does this, one remains in the 
thought of his great possessions of personal good- 
ness. 

There had been no real acknowledgment of God. 



256 Pearls of Great Price 



The 3 r oung man had done good of himself. And the 
poor to whom He was commanded to give — can we 
not all see that the Lord is poor in the life of one 
who, though one may do outwardly good deeds, 
never acknowledges the divine source of good? We 
give to the poor when we turn away from self to the 
Lord, from the inordinate love of the world to the 
love of the neighbor. Blessed is he that considereth 
the poor, the Lord will deliver him in the day of 
trouble." But this is a hard lesson to learn; and yet 
only as we learn and practice it do we become true 
followers of the Lord. And this selling of our riches 
— this giving to the Lord — this inward acknowledg- 
ment of Him as the one to whom we must ascribe all 
good, is attended by many trials and bitter temp- 
tations. It is a life one comes into only as one takes 
up one's cross and follows the Lord in the regenera- 
tion. 



Poverty seduces and leads man away from 
heaven equally as opulence. Among the poor are 
very many who are not content with their lot, who 
seek many things, and believe riches to be blessings, 
and therefore when they do not receive them, they 
are angry, and think evily about the Divine Provi- 
dence. They also envy others their goods, and 
equally defraud others when there is an oppor- 
tunity, — Heaven and Hell. 



XXX 

JESUS FACES THE CROSS. 
Sr. Mark x. 32-52. 



The Lord's earthly life was drawing to its close. 
He was making His last visit to Jerusalem. He was 
facing the cross. How many things were crowded 
into the last few days of the Lord's life among men! 
The dreadful experience He was entering into was 
not an unforeseen thing. He was fully aware of it. 
He knew from the beginning that the work He came 
to accomplish would involve the passion of the 
cross. For redemption was the subjugation of hell; 
and hell could be conquered only as the infernals 
were met in spiritual combat and overthrown. And 
that this might be done, the hells had to be drawn 
out into the actual expression of all the malignity 
and hate of which they were capable. Only in this 
way was it possible to subjugate them. Thus the 
Lord drew them out and by the death of the cross 
fully subjugated them, and thereby completely 
glorified His humanity. The Apostle clearly states 
this doctrine. He says: u By death He destroyed 
him who had the power of death. " The Lord was 
the Word Incarnate, and hell's hatred of the Word 
found its supreme expression in the effort of the hells 

257 



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Pearls of Great Price 



to destroy Him who was the Word in human mani- 
festation. But this was done through the fallen 
Jewish Church out of whose heart had gone all love 
of the Word as the divine truth. 

Thus the hatred of the Lord by the Jewish 
Church and all the indignity it heaped upon Him 
and the cruelty He endured at its hands were out- 
wardly expressions of the hate of the hells with 
which the Jewish Church was at that time in con- 
nection. But by the cross He conquered. In that 
final conflict He drew out and subdued completely 
the evil powers, overthrowing entirely their dread- 
ful dominion. The cross was thus His last and great- 
est temptation. It completed the work of redemp- 
tion. There on Calvary Jesus tasted death for every 
man. His seeming defeat was really His final 
victory. There in the hour of His agony, He, by 
the divine truth, judged and remanded to hell the 
leagued forces of evil, thereby restoring the moral 
equilibrium of the spiritual world, and giving free- 
dom to the human race. He delivered man from his 
enemies and from the hand of them that hated him. 
What a glorious redemption it was ! What a deliver- 
ance it was! How precious the cross of Christ is 
when seen in this light! No wonder St. Paul ex- 
claimed: "God forbid that I should glory save in 
the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." This doctrine 
of the cross is worthy of Christianity; for it frees it 
from the erroneous views that men have enter- 



Pearls of Great Price 259 

tained about it, and makes it the sign and symbol 
of the Lord's victory. 

JESUS GOING TO MEET HIS CROSS. 

In one of the gospels we are told that when the 
Lord was transfigured on the mount, that Moses 
and Elias, who stood by, "talked with Him con- 
cerning His decease which He should accomplish at 
Jerusalem and His coming glory." And now He is 
going up to Jerusalem to meet His enemies, to be 
condemned and put to death. 

There are many theories that have from time to 
time arisen in the church as explanations of the 
Lord's suffering on the cross. The one that has most 
widely obtained is known in the religious world as 
the Vicarious Atonement. This theory is based upon 
the idea that man is related to God in a legal way. 
God is conceived of as a divine Monarch whose laws 
are external dictates. Man having violated the law 
under which he was placed, incurred the disfavor of 
God and came under the condemnation of the law 
of the Divine justice. God therefore demanded that 
His wrath be placated and His justice satisfied. But 
the wrath of God could not be placated by the sin- 
ner. His justice could not be satisfied by man. Here 
arose a supreme crisis. How could God be just and 
the justifier of the ungodly? This situation was met 
by the Eternal Son of God taking upon Him man's 
nature; and by His vicarious death on the cross, His 



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death in man's stead, He appeased the divine wrath 
and satisfied the claims of the divine justice. He 
made to God the Father a full and complete satis- 
faction for the sins of the world. Having thus 
suffered in man's stead — having made the law 
honorable — having by the shedding of His blood 
placated the divine wrath, God was able to extend 
forgiveness to man — to save him by an act of faith 
on man's part, in this atoning work of Christ. The 
merit of Christ could be imputed to the sinner and 
salvation become a free gift to all who would believe. 
This the doctrine of what is known as the Substitu- 
tional Atonement. 

Another theory is that known as the Moral In- 
fluence doctrine. This theory repudiates the vicari- 
ous atonement and holds that the wonderful love 
for man shown by Christ in His willingness to suffer 
death for man on the cross, is attended by an 
influence so deep and strong that when the sinner 
awakens to the fact of this great love of Christ, his 
heart will melt under its influence and lead him to 
repentance and newness of life. Still another theory 
is that Christ was the greatest hero — that He came 
to show men how to live — to be an example to them. 
And in living His life — in realizing His ideals, He 
met with opposition, but was always true to His 
convictions — even laying down His natural life in 
defense of the great truth He came to make known 
and to exemplify. This is the humanitarian concept. 



Pearls of Great Price 261 

The Christian doctrine of the cross is far-removed 
from all these theories. When the Lord opened the 
internal sense of His Word, there shone from it the 
true doctrine of the purpose of the Incarnation. The 
fall of man was a very gradual process, and con- 
sisted in the closing of the higher spiritual planes of 
the mind until the whole human race came to live 
only on the natural plane of the mind. The closing 
of the planes of the spiritual mind, shut heaven out 
of human life; and man in this world came under 
the control of the evil powers. He was the slave of 
fell; and evil spirits not only infested his mind, but 
obsessed his very body. Ultimately damnation 
stood at the door and threatened. The whole 
human race was threatened with destruction. Dur- 
ing this fall of man the Lord had kept in communi- 
cation with him by means of angels, whom He filled 
with His spirit; but when man fell below the 
reach of the angels universal destruction would 
have followed, had not the Lord bowed the heavens 
and come into the world by the actual assumption 
of a human nature. This He did. The human 
nature He assumed was involved, as to its heredity, 
in all the evils of the race, and was therefore capable 
of being tempted and assaulted by the hells. The 
Lord therefore admitted into His human nature the 
assaults of the evil spirits. He met the hells on our 
plane and in our nature. He fought against and 
subjugated them and thus delivered man from their 



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Great 



Price 



power and dominion. This was redemption. The 
Apostle, St. John says: "For this purpose was the 
Son of God manifested : that He might destroy the 
works of the devil." The passion of the Cross was 
involved in this w T ork of redemption. 1. In His 
crucifixion the Lord represented the state of the 
Jewish Church as to the Word. That church had 
rejected the Word, putting in its place the traditions 
of the elders. And the Lord bore that sin in His 
body. He represented in His trial, condemnation 
and passion what the church had done to the Word. 
2. His Passion of the Cross was His last and greatest 
temptation; for by it He drew but, as we have said, 
and fully subjugated the infernal crew and thus 
delivered man from their power. 3. By His Passion 
He fully glorified His Humanity and made it 
divine. Thus was effected the great atonement of 
God and man in the glorified person of the Lord, and 
this atonement all may now receive by turning to the 
Lord, repenting of their sins and living from Him a 
new life. This is what St. Paul meant when he 
wrote: "God was in Christ reconciling the world 
unto Himself." 

THE SONS OF ZEBEDEE. 
St. Matthew T in recording this story tells us that 
the request to have James and John sit the one on 
the left hand and the other on the right hand of the 
Lord in His kingdom was made by their mother. 
The lesson, however, is the same both in St. Mark's 



Pearls oe Great Price 



263 



and St. Matthew's account, only the introduction 
of the mother into the story by St. Matthew adds 
an interesting element. Aside from the lesson of the 
letter of the story, which is so easy to see, there is 
the deeper lesson of the spiritual sense. The mother 
stands for the church and James and John for the 
two spiritual sons of the church, the love of the 
neighbor and the love of the Lord. The true request 
of the church must ever be that the Lord may exalt 
these two loves, like two sons, in His kingdom. For 
all genuine religion consists in the exaltation of these 
two loves. • They are the fundamental loves of 
heaven and the church. But this cannot be done 
without trial; for they are opposed by the two op- 
posite loves of the carnal man — the love of the 
world and the love of self. The trials through which 
this exaltation is made possible are meant by what 
our Lord said to them as recorded by St. Matthew: 
"Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink 
of and to be baptized with the baptism that I am 
baptized with?" 

The Lord's glorification is the type of man's re- 
generation. He glorified His Humanity through vic- 
tory in temptations admitted into His human from 
Mary. Those awful combats were His cup and His 
baptism. And if the love of the neighbor, repre- 
sented by James, and the love of the Lord repre- 
sented by John are to sit, the one on His left hand 
and the other on His right hand in His kingdom, 



264 



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they must endure trial and temptation; for it is 
only by victory in temptation that these two loves 
are exalted in human life. 

THE BLIND MAN RESTORED TO SIGHT. 
This is a pathetic story and reveals the great love 
of the Lord. It was a miracle wrought by Him that 
has in it, as its content, the story of how the Lord 
opens the eyes of all who come to Him today. None 
of us is born with the knowledge of spiritual truth. 
We all come into life spiritually blind. Revelation 
from the Lord is the source of all spiritual light. 
But if one really desires to see the light of heavenly 
things in the Word the Lord is ever ready to say: 
"Receive thy sight." The understanding is the 
seeing faculty of the mind. The natural understand- 
ing is able to see natural truths, but to see natural 
truth is to confine one's vision to this world. There 
is a spiritual world and a spiritual life; and that one 
may see the light of the spiritual world and enter 
into the life of the spirit, one's spiritual understand- 
ing must be opened. One is blind until the Lord 
opens one's eyes to see the eternal verities of the 
Word, heaven and the life eternal. And what the 
Lord did physically for the blind man of this story, 
He will do spiritually for all who will from their 
hearts earnestly pray for the opening of their spirit- 
ual understanding. This is w T hat the Lord is doing 
for all today who seek Him in the inner sense of His 
Divine Word. 



XXXI 

JESUS EXERCISING KINGLY 
AUTHORITY. 

St. Mark xi. 1-33. 



Palm Sunday is the Christian Festival which 
commemorates the Lord's triumphal entry into the 
city of Jerusalem. The Lord made His entry as the 
ancient kings of Israel were wont to come to their 
coronation. This was what filled the multitude with 
such enthusiasm. He came with every sign and 
badge of royalty. This moved the people; for they 
thought that now the long looked for deliverance 
from Roman dominion had come. The Old 
Testament prophecies were interpreted literally. 
The Holy City would again become the centre of 
Jewish national life; the court of Israel would 
assume its ancient splendor; the kingdom of David 
would be re-established, and Israel would shine 
again in the galaxy of nations. This was the vision 
that rose before the mental eyes of the multitude. 

Even the disciples shared this feeling and in- 
dulged this hope, for at this time they were living 
on the Jewish plane of thought. 

But notwithstanding the mistaken idea the multi- 
265 



266 Pearls of Great Price 

tude and the disciples had of the Lord's entry into 
Jerusalem, the whole scene made a divinely ordered 
picture of what was and is true of the Lord's entry 
into the church and His reign as king in His king- 
dom, which is not of this world. 

THE SPIRITUAL MEANING OF THE SCENE. 
The city Jerusalem is one of the most familiar 
symbols of the church. Sometimes it is used in the 
Holy Scriptures to denote the church in its consum- 
mated state. For instance, when the Lord wept 
over Jerusalem because it had stoned the prophets 
and rejected those who were sent to it, we may all 
see that, as thus employed, it represents the church 
consummated and moribund — the church out of 
whose heart has gone all regard for the divine truth 
and the life of heaven. But when it is said: "Jerusa- 
lem is a city that is compact together," by Jerusa- 
lem is meant the church in its doctrinal soundness 
and integrity— the church as the center of spiritual 
life. 

So when God would give us a picture of the true 
church, and its joyful reception of Him in His 
Divine Humanity as the King of Glory, He, by 
influx into the multitude, caused them to do and 
say in a natural way the things that, notwithstand- 
ing the literal ideas of the people, represented what 
must ever be true of the church which the Lord is 
now establishing in the lives of all who receive Him 
as divine in His Humanity. 



Pearls of Great Price 



267 



It is in this way that the Jewish thought of^a 
natural kingdom is converted into the higher 
thought of the church as the spiritual kingdom of 
God in human souls, and the thought of a temporal 
king into the higher spiritual thought of the Lord as 
the eternal spiritual king who comes to reign by His 
love and wisdom in the hearts of men. This is the 
spiritual significance of the Triumphal Entry. 

THE MANNER OF THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY. 

In relation to the Lord Himself the manner of 
the Triumphal Entry is the picture of the divine 
order in the glorification of His Humanity. The 
Lord assumed human nature as it was. His glorifi- 
cation v consisted in bringing all things in His 
humanity into perfect divine human correspondence 
with His divinity. The natural, rational and spirit- 
ual degrees of life in the Lord's Human were 
infinitely regenerated and brought into correspond- 
ence with His indwelling divinity. This is all 
pictured to us in this story. For the Lord riding the 
colt, on which were placed the garments of the 
disciples, represented the glorified natural and 
rational planes of life in His human nature, and 
their connection by means of divine spiritual truths 
meant by the garments of the disciples, with His 
Divinity — thus forming the Divine Humanity in 
which He is to be received as the King of Glory. 

But in relation to the church, which is His king- 



268 



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dom, the manner of His entry pictures the manner 
of His coming to His church. The church as a body 
is only the larger man. As such the planes of the 
church's mind must be ordered and co-ordinated 
and brought into perfect correspondence. This is 
effected through reformation and regeneration. The 
natural must serve the rational, the rational the 
spiritual, and the spiritual the Lord. 

But in entering the mind of the church, that He 
may rule it by His love and wisdom, He must be 
rationally received. He must spiritually ride upon 
the colt. The colt stands for the rational faculty 
which the Lord first of 2W frees, for until He, by the 
influence and power of goodness and truth, repre- 
sented by the two disciples who untied the colt, 
frees the rational faculty of the mind it remains tied 
outside of what is spiritual. It is the church's busi- 
ness, by rational teaching, to untie the rational 
faculty and bring it to the Lord. When this is done, 
and it may now be done, for now it is permitted to 
enter intellectually into the mysteries of faith, then 
the rational is clothed with spiritual truths; and so 
clothed, the Lord, by means of it, enters the life of 
the church as its Lord and King. This makes the 
church rational. It becomes all glorious within. 
Truth takes the place of mere dogma and light 
dispells darkness, and the place of the Lord's feet is 
made glorious. And then all natural truths and all 
natural knowledges are dedicated to the Lord. This 



Pearls of Great Price 269 



is what is meant by the garments of the multitude 
spread in the way and the palm branches which 
were spread before the Lord. The church, made 
new by the revelation to it by the internal meaning 
of the Holy Scriptures, may now come into the full 
spiritual realization of all that the Lord's Triumphal 
Entry into Jerusalem stands for. 

THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE. 
The cleansing of the temple — the casting out of 
them that bought and sold in it and the overthrow 
of the tables of the money changers — has two dis- 
tinct meanings: (1) It pictures to us the Lord's 
work of cleansing the humanity which He assumed 
through the Virgin Mary. While the Lord was sin- 
less; for He said to the Jews: " Which of you con- 
vinceth me of sin?" yet He did not take upon Him- 
self an immaculate humanity; for "He was born of 
the seed of Abraham after the flesh. " The Lord in 
His Humanity took upon Himself the heredity of 
the human race. This was why He was tempted in 
all points as we are. Hereditarily, the Lord bore all 
our weaknesses. When the Apostle says: "The 
Captain of our salvation was made perfect through 
suffering," he is referring to the temptations of the 
Lord and to the purification of His humanity conse- 
quent upon His victories over them. It was only, 
as the same Apostle says, "after He had purged 
away our sins" that "He sat down on the right 
hand of the Majesty on high." 



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He cleansed the temple of His Humanity of all 
the imperfections of the racial heredity. He elimin- 
ated all that was finite. He replaced what was put- 
off with divine substance from His Godhead and 
thus formed in the stead of the infirm humanity 
from the Virgin Mary a Divine Manhood. 

The cleansing of the temple at Jerusalem was the 
type and symbol of this purification and consequent 
glorification of the Lord's Humanity. So that the 
Divine Humanity, in which dwells bodily all the ful- 
ness of the Godhead, is what is meant by the words: 
" Jehovah is in the Temple of His holiness, let all the 
earth keep silent before Him." 

(2) The cleansing of the temple is the picture of 
personal regeneration of which the Lord's glorifica- 
tion is the type. Man is born into evils of all kinds. 
This does not mean that he is born in sin. Evil con- 
sists in the hereditary bent and inclination of human 
nature toward the evils forbidden in the Command- 
ments, and is confined wholly to the natural race- 
mind. Out of this evil state, in which we incline to 
forbidden things, we are brought through the work 
of regeneration. This is a slow spiritual process, but 
as it proceeds it cleanses the natural mind of things 
evil and false and builds it up in things good and 
true, resulting finally in the union of the spiritual 
mind and the natural, by which we become new 
creatures in Christ Jesus, old things having passed 
away. So it is that the Lord, through our co-opera- 



Pearls Of Great Price 



271 



tion, regenerates us as He glorified His own Human- 
ity, making us cleansed and regenerated temples of 
the Holy Spirit. 

THE LORD'S AUTHORITY. 

"The chief priests and elders of the people came 
unto Him as He was teaching and said: By what 
authority doest thou these things, and who gave thee 
this authority?" They did not concern themselves 
about the character of the Lord's teaching, nor the 
nature of what He did. They questioned His right 
to teach and to do. The Lord made His answer to 
their question contingent upon their answer to the 
question He proceeded to ask them: "The baptism 
of John, whence was it: from heaven or of men?" 
They were afraid to answer this question; for 
although, in their hearts, they believed John's 
baptism was of men, yet they dared not openly say 
so, for the people believed John was a prophet. And 
they could not say that it was from heaven; for if 
they made that admission He would say unto them : 
"Why, then, do ye not believe in him?" So, true to 
their hypocrisy, they answered : "We do not know." 
But there is something deeper than the mere defeat 
of the chief priests and elders in our Lord's question. 
John represented the written Word of God. Jesus 
was that same Word made flesh. There are not two 
Words of God, but one only Word. For the Word 
that was written was the Word which- in the begin- 



272 



Pearls of Great Price 



ning was with God and was God, and which, in the 
fulness of time, became incarnate in Jesus Christ. 
Seen from this spiritual viewpoint, the acknowl- 
edgment of the divine origin of John's baptism is the 
only basis of acquiring a true knowledge of the 
origin and divine authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

How true this is! Those who acknowledge the 
divine origin of the Scriptures also acknowledge the 
virgin birth and consequently the deity of the Lord 
Christ, while those who believe the Scriptures are of 
men and thus of human origin, at the same time 
regard the Christ as the natural son of Joseph and 
Mary — thus as a mere man, though highly endowed. 
What men think of the Bible — that very thing they 
think of Christ. So that today, in order to bring 
men to the acknowledgment of the Divine Human- 
ity of the Saviour, they must first be brought to see 
the origin and nature of the Bible. Right along this 
line lies the work of the New Church. The success 
of our teachers in bringing the minds of men into a 
state to receive the Lord in His Divine Humanity is 
according to and measured by what they are able 
to do in opening the spiritual sense of th& scriptures 
and thus showing wherein the divinity of the Bible 
consists. Open the Word and then the remnant will 
see, acknowledge and receive Him who is the Word 
made flesh. 

And the baptism of John — it stood for the cleans- 
ing of the external mind from evils, from the motive 



Peaels of Great Price 



273 



of obedience to God — thus for spiritual reformation, 
Jesus cleansing the temple stood for the purifying of 
the internal of the natural mind. John's work must 
precede Christ's work, or, in other words, a man 
must be reformed by religion before he can be regen- 
erated by the spirit of God. Unless one will ac- 
knowledge that repentance and reformation are of 
God, one can never see nor receive the Lord as the 
Redeemer and Regenerator. His power to cleanse 
the temple of the heart is contingent upon our 
acknowledgment of the divine commandments by 
which the externals of life are reformed. Until one 
really acknowledges from one's heart the heavenly 
origin of John's baptism one cannot see the real 
ground of the Lord's divine authority to cleanse the 
temple. 



Cleansings from impure things are effected 
through the truths of faith, because they teach 
what good is, what charity is, what the neighbor 
is, and what faith is. — Arcana. 



XXXII 

JESUS SILENCES HIS ADVERSARIES. 
St. Mark xii. 1-44. 



The Lord was the Divine wisdom incarnate — the 
Word made flesh. All His sayings therefore had 
their origin in the Divine Reason, and contain and 
express the Divine Truth on all the planes of angelic 
and human life. As to the Word, which dwelt 
incarnate in Him, He was above all the heavens, 
and what He spoke passed down through the 
heavens to men on earth. From this, one sees that 
while His parables in their outer form are simple 
and thus adapted to the simple in mind, they at the 
same time contain degrees of divine wisdom that 
ascend through the heavens enlightening the very 
heavens themselves in which His Word is forever 
settled. Of course, this is true of the entire Word; 
for the W^ord, in its letter, is a divine parable of the 
Divine Human life and of the Divine Human life 
realized in man's life of regeneration. 

This is why the Bible is the means by which the 
church on earth is consociated with the church in 
the heavens and conjoined to the Lord. When the 
Word is reverently and prayerfully read, the angels 
of the natural heaven instantaneously evolve from 

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275 



its letter meanings deeper than those seen by the 
one who is reading its letter; and the angels of the 
spiritual heaven evolve meanings deeper than those 
seen by the angels of the natural heaven; and the 
angels of the celestial heaven evolve meanings 
deeper than those seen by the angels of the spiritual 
heaven. This is what is meant by the wonderful 
statement in the church writings: "When man 
reverently reads the Word, the angels who are 
present, instantaneously evolve the spiritual sense 
and by it connect man with heaven and through 
heaven conjoin him with the Lord." 

This is a wonderful doctrine; and it explains why 
it is that the simple reverent reading of the Lord's 
Word brings the elevation of soul one feels when one 
humbly seeks the Lord in His Word. This is true of 
our Lord's parables. They are earthly stories with 
heavenly meanings inside them. 

THE PARABLE OF THE VINEYARD. 

This is a parable of the church — of the church in 
its dispensations. There is only one church. There 
has never been but one church. But the one church, 
which is the union of goodness and truth in human 
lives, has been given to man under several dispensa- 
tions. These dispensational churches have come 
one after the other as outward forms of the one 
church adapted and accommodated to man's state 
and in correspondence with the different plans of 
the race-mind. The student of the internal sense 



276 



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of the Holy Scriptures knows them as the Most 
Ancient Church, the Ancient Church, the Jewish 
Church, the First Christian Church and the New or 
Second Christian Church, signified by the Hoh r 
City New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation. 
These names stand for dispensations of the church. 

The Christian dispensation involved the two 
advents of the Lord — the first Advent in the flesh, 
and the second Advent "in the Word which is from 
Him and is Himself." 

This parable in its letter had reference to the 
Jewish dispensation, especially as to its ultimate 
rejection of the Word and its divine teaching, and 
to its final rejection of the Lord who came as the 
Word made flesh. 

But the full meaning of the parable, in its spirit- 
ual sense, is now disclosed; and we may learn from 
it the gracious provision the Lord has made for 
man's salvation in this, the crowning dispensation 
of the church; and also that w T e to whom this 
heavenly vineyard has been let ma}^ guard against 
the evils and falsities that seek to destroy the 
church. 

The certain man who planted the vineyard is, of 
course, the Lord. The church is from Him. Its 
doctrine, order and life are from Him. He plants 
the church, as the certain man of the parable 
planted the vineyard. 

Think of this! The church is the Lord's own. It 



Pearls of Great Price 



277 



is solely from Him. For that which makes the 
church in man is as truly from the Lord as that 
^which makes heaven in the angels is from Him. 

But the church in its essence and principles, 
which is from the Lord, must come to man under 
the form of an outward dispensation adapted to his 
spiritual state and genius. It must be "let out" to 
man. This letting out of the church forms its 
dispensation. Thus what we call the "New Church" 
is the one eternal Christian Church "let out" under 
the form of a new dispensation. It is therefore 
never permissible to speak of the New Church as 
something different from the Christian Church; for 
the New Church is the Christian Church which the 
Lord Himself founded on the bed-rock of the divin- 
ity of His Humanity, and of which He said: "The 
gates of hell shall not prevail against it." It is the 
Christian Church restored, but more than restored 
to its ancient apostolic character; for in restoring it, 
the Lord opened the Word to it and thus came to it 
again as the Son of Man in the clouds of heaven — in 
the revelation of the inner meaning and genuine 
doctrine of His Word. 

The divine doctrine revealed to the church in this 
new dispensation is symbolized by the hedge which 
the certain man of the parable set around the vine- 
yard. The hedge around the vineyard has the 
same significance as the wall around the Holy City. 
The church, while not a fenced in territory, is never- 



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theless enclosed by its divinely revealed doctrine. 
Its doctrine is what gives it distinctiveness — other- 
ness from cults and sects that are not the church. 
The Lord put this hedge of doctrine about His 
church, which means that the doctrine of the church 
is a divine and authoritative revelation from the 
Lord, given for the protection of those interior 
principles that are constitutive of the church as a 
spiritual life. It is the duty of those to whom the 
Lord has "let out" His vineyard to protect the 
hedge He has set about it ; for if the hedge is ever 
broken down the vineyard will be destroyed. 

The vineyard, or winepress, to which the grapes 
were brought and in which the skin and seeds were 
separated from the juicy pulp and cast away, stands 
for the divine Word in the church to which human 
lives must be brought for judgment — the judgment 
of divine truth, that from them may be separated 
and removed the things that cannot be incorporated 
into the spiritual life. As the winepress was in the 
centre of the vineyard, so the Word is in the centre 
of the church's life. It must be made central; and 
to it we must be brought for the means of separating 
evils and falsities from life. Every human life must 
be trodden in this winepress, that it may come forth 
purified and made fit for the Lord's kingdom. 

The tower in the vineyard was for outlook, that 
approaching enemies might be seen and warning- 
given. It is the symbol of the rational mind of the 



Pearls of Great Price 



279 



church formed by the truth; for such a rational 
mind is a spiritual tower from which one may have 
an outlook and from w T hich the approach of what is 
destructive ma} r be seen and provided against, 

These things belong to the church as now let out 
to husbandmen. May we all prove faifhful to our 
sacred trust and do our duty fully as unto the Lord 
of the vineyard. 

THE WOMAN WHO HAD SEVEN HUSBANDS. 

The Sadducees were a Jewish sect that denied the 
resurrection, which meant that they denied the im- 
mortality of man. They were seeking to entrap the 
Lord by putting to Him the question: "Now there 
were with us seven brethren; and the first when he 
had married a wife, deceased, and having no issue 
left his wife unto his brother; likewise the second 
also, and the third unto the seventh. And last of 
all the woman died also. Therefore in the resurrec- 
tion whose wife shall she be of the seven? for they 
all had her." The spiritual sense of this question 
and the spiritual meaning of our Lord's reply in- 
volves the deep things of life. Spiritually con- 
sidered, the denial of the resurrection is the denial 
of regeneration; for regeneration is a spiritual resur- 
rection from the death of sin to the life of righteous- 
ness. The spiritual Sadducee is one who denies that 
there is such a quality as spiritual life. He believes 
in civil and moral life, but not in a spiritual life. 
Spiritual life results from the heavenly marriage of 



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goodness and truth in the human soul. Because of 
this and for the sake of this correspondence, the 
Sadducees began to speak of marriage. How won- 
derful it is that the Lord makes the wrath of man 
praise Him! If seven brothers had successively one 
woman to wife whose wife should she be in the final 
resurrection? Think! It is a law of regeneration 
that every good must be united to its own truth. 

But in the wonderful process of regeneration there 
occur external unions and dissolutions before the 
true marriage union of goodness and truth is 
effected. These spurious unions were represented 
in the Jewish Church by the law that compelled the 
brother to marry his brother's widow in the event 
of his dying childless, and thus raise up seed unto his 
brother. The case the Sadducees presented was 
that of seven brothers who successively had come 
into this relation to the same woman. In the spirit- 
ual sense of the Bible the number seven means what 
is complete and full. Here the light breaks through 
the cloud. For the woman who had had seven 
husbands and at the last died herself childless, 
represents an affection or a goo.d to which truths of 
every kind were adjoined but between which and 
itself there had existed no real correspondence or 
union, and from which adjunctions there had 
resulted no spiritual offspring — no real works of 
charity. 

Such a good or affection is, of course, spurious. 



Pearls of Great Price 



281 



One may have a feeling of natural charity — mere 
good nature, and it may be adjoined to many — very 
many, schemes of use that are wholly unwise and 
therefore fruitless of right results. These various 
schemes are the seven husbands. And the end of all 
these mere adjunctions of natural good to mere in- 
tellectual schemes may be the death of the natural 
good itself, leaving the heart, because of repeated 
disappointment, hardened and filled with doubt and 
disgust. This is the woman dying also. 

The Lord said to the Sadducees: 'Tn heaven they 
neither marry nor are given in marriage." Not that 
there are no married pairs in heaven; for heaven is 
often compared to a marriage, but that spurious 
unions between mere natural good and mere 
schemes of usefulness do not exist in heaven. There 
every good is genuine, and is welded to its own gen- 
uine spiritual truth. And this marriage of genuine 
goodness and truth must begin on earth. It cannot 
begin in heaven. No heavenly marriage that has 
really begun on earth shall fail of perpetuation in 
heaven. The union of the will and understanding 
in good and truth makes an angel. And in heaven 
this lovely union goes on and is perfected to 
eternity. But it must begin here. 

WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? 

This question was addressed to the Pharisees. 
They were the ritualists of the Jewish Church ; and 
their answer indicated it. Mere ritualists think 



282 Pearls of Great Price 



superficially. They answered the Lord by saying 
that Christ, the Anointed, the one for whose coming 
they were looking, was the "Son of David." 

They did not understand the prophecies of their 
own Scripture; for the Messiah promised in the Old 
Testament was none other than Jehovah. The 
Lord immediately proceeded to show them their 
error. He said: "How then doth David in spirit 
call Him Lord? How could the Christ he a mere 
man if David called Him Lord? David's Lord 
could not be David's son." This is still the great 
question: "What think ye of Christ? Whose son is 
He?" Christ's Humanity — was it the product of the 
natural union of Joseph and Mary? If it was, then 
Christ is a mere man and Christianity a mere sys- 
tem of morality. The whole Scripture stands out 
opposed to such a doctrine. David calls Him Lord, 
how then can- He be David's son? The whole Bible 
teaches the divine conception of the Lord's Human- 
ity — the Lord Himself declared His deity, so that 
those who think of Him as mere man do so in the 
face of all the Scriptures teach, and in contradiction 
of all the Lord said about Himself. Let us never 
forget the divine teaching of the writings of the 
church, that the church is with those who acknowl- 
edge the humanity of the Lord's Divinity and the 
divinity of His Humanity. "Thought of God as 
Man opens heaven. Thought of God as not Man 
closes heaven." 



XXXIII 

JESUS WARNS AND COMFORTS HIS 
FRIENDS. 

St. Mark xiii. 1-14. 



The Lord's earthly ministry was drawing to its 
close; and its last days were full of work, for the dis- 
ciples had to be prepared for the dreadful things 
that were to come into His life and into their lives. 
The Saviour Himself had known of and looked for- 
ward to the end. He knew it all. How calmly He 
faced it : He was not concerned for Himself. He had 
come to endure those things and to give His life, a 
ransome for many. But He did think of His disci- 
ples. They were like little children; for none of them 
fully comprehended Him; none of them knew what 
He must face; none of them was prepared to meet 
the blow that would fall upon them. They must be 
warned and comforted. This warning and comfort 
constitute the burden of the literal sense of this 
week's lesson. 

There is much that we may all learn from it as it 
stands; for the Christian life as a quality that is 
assaulted by the powers of darkness and we all need 
the Lord's warning and His comfort. We need to 

283 



284 



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understand, 'in the very beginning of the Christian 
life, that it is not something that we enter upon 
and go on with without encountering spiritual, and 
sometimes natural opposition. The natural man in 
each one opens out to the world and down to the 
hells; and the life of the natural man in one does not 
yield itself up to the life of the spiritual man without 
opposition. 

There ensues a long struggle; there come many 
trials and dire temptations; every gain the spiritual 
Life makes costs suffering. It is needful for one to 
know this in the beginning. But the warning against 
spiritual assaults is accompanied with great com- 
fort. The Lord will be near His child to strengthen 
him. His hand will hold His disciple's hand and no 
real harm shall come to him when he is delivered up 
to the councils of the ungodly and beaten in the 
synagogues of Satan and brought before the kings 
and rulers of the powers of darkness. This is the 
great comfort. The disciple shall come out of the 
strife victoriously. He shall be upheld; and endur- 
ing unto the end, shall be saved. 

This is the lesson of the letter of the story; and it 
is a beautiful and helpful lesson. But there lies 
underneath the letter of this lesson the story of the 
end of an old dispensation of the church and the 
coming of the Lord in the glory and power of the 
spiritual sense of His Word to establish a New 
Church, and in it restore mankind to the knowledge 



Pearls of Great Price 285 



and worship of Him in His Divine Humanity. This 
is the burden of the spiritual sense of the lesson. 

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLE. 

The Lord's prophecy with regard to the Temple 
was literally fulfilled not many years after His 
death; for it was razed to the ground by Titus. But 
that literal destruction of the Temple did not fulfill 
all that was involved in the Lord's prophecy con- 
cerning its destruction. 

The Temple is the symbol, in stone, of the church. 
How significant, seen in this light, are the words: 
"He went out of the Temple" : It was a sign to the 
Jews that their house was left unto them desolate: 
for the Lord was the glory of the Temple, and His 
going out of it for the last time made it like Israel 
when the ark was taken by the Philistines — a mere 
u Ichahod" The glory had departed. But what the 
Lord said about the destruction of the Temple is not 
to be understood as referring to the Jews only, but is 
also a description, in correspondential language, of 
the First Christian dispensation which had its be- 
ginning at the time of the Lord's First Advent. The 
church itself, as consisting of the union of goodness 
and truth, never comes into complete consumma- 
tion, but dispensations of the church come and go. 
The Christian Church, founded as it was, on the 
rock of the Divinity of the Lord's Humanity, will 
last for ever; but the first dispensation under which 



286 Pearls of Great Price 

it was given after the Jewish passed away, was 
destined to come to an end. This is what is meant 
by the end or consummation of the age. For it is not 
the "end of the natural world" that is to happen, 
but the end of the age or dispensation of the church. 
Kosmos, which means world was not used by the 
Lord; but instead Aeon which means age. 

The Lord's coming in the flesh was to be suc- 
ceeded by His coming as the Spirit of truth — His 
Second Coming in the Word, by the revelation of its 
spiritual sense. The new Testament in recording 
the Lord's first coming is careful to point forward to 
the time of His Second Coming. 

The Jews rejected the Christ because they looked 
for a literal fulfilment of the Qld Testament prophe- 
cies of the coming of the Messiah. Christian theo- 
logians wonder why the doctors and priests of the 
Jewish Church could not see in Jesus Christ a spirit- 
ual fulfilment of the Messianic prophecies; but they 
do seem able to see that they take exactly the same 
position in regard to the New Testament prophecies 
of his Second Coming. 

The same symbols are used in the New Testament 
in connection with the Second Coming of Christ 
that are used in the Old Testament in connection 
with the advent of the Messiah. Why interpret the 
Old Testament prophecies spiritually and the New 
Testament prophecies literally? The fact is the lan- 
guage of this chapter is correspondential. It is the 



Pearls of <jreat Price 



287 



story, in symbols, of the end of the dispensation of 
the Lord's First Advent, and the beginning of the 
dispensation of His Second Advent, or His coming 
in the Word. 

The Temple stands for the church. It stood for 
the First Christian Church. The Apostolic age of the 
Christian Church covered three hundred years, dur- 
ing which time the Lord Jesus was worshipped in 
simple faith as God manifested in the flesh. It is 
true that the Apostolic Fathers did not understand 
the rationale of the Incarnation, nor did they have 
clearly defined doctrine about the union of the 
Divine and the Human in the person of the Lord; 
but they did know that God was in Christ and that 
when they looked up to and worshipped Christ , they 
looked up to and worshipped God. This they knew 
from the Lord's own words: "He that hath 
seen Me hath seen the Father. 7 ' Thus the 
Apostolic church worshipped the Lord. It knew 
that the Father was in Him and that the Holy 
Spirit was from Him. It was therefore a true church 
— the spiritual Temple of the Lord. As the third 
century drew to its close, there arose in the church 
disputes and controversies in regard to the Lord's 
relation to the Father. Arius denied His proper 
divinity and held that He was the highest of all 
creatures. This heresy spread until the church's 
very life -was threatened; for nearly half of Christen- 
dom took the position of Arius. 



288 



Pearls of Great Price 



In 325 a.d. Constantine, the Roman Emperor, 
convened the Council of Nice for the purpose of 
settling this dispute. Three hundred and eighteen 
bishops came together. And in this council, under 
the fiery and eloquent leadership of Athanasius, 
there was formulated the now commonly accepted 
doctrine of the tripersonality of God — the doctrine 
that each name in the holy trinity stands for a 
distinct and separate person. God's unity in Christ 
w&s destroyed in the mind of the church. Instead 
of the trinity of Father and Son and Holy Spirit in 
the Lord in Whom, as the Apostle taught, dwelt all 
the fulness of the Godhead bodily, the church came 
to accept a tritheism. This was the beginning of the 
decline of the church. The Apostolic age ended; and 
there arose a church that became Christian in name 
only. Romanism developed. The church was, in 
this world, removed from its original foundation. 
Corruptions in doctrine and life arose. Then came 
the Reformation of sixteenth century. But the 
Reformation was only a protest against and a cor- 
rection of external abuses. It taught nothing essen- 
tially different from Romanism, with the exception 
that it added the doctrine of salvation by faith 
alone to the already long list of heresies it inherited 
from the age of the Councils. The internal state of 
the church was not changed. Things were out- 
wardly improved in the Reform church;* for the 
Word was restored to the people, But no new 



Pearls of Great Price 289 



upward step in doctrine and life was taken. And so 
the end came. The age was consummanted ; and in 
the middle of the eighteenth century, the judgment, 
foretold in St. Matthew, in Daniel, and the Book 
of Revelation, was executed in the world of spirits 
upon those who, migrating from Christendom into 
that world, had formed to themselves imaginary 
heavens, which hung like dense clouds over the 
minds of men on earth. 

This judgment swept them away; and then the 
Lord formed a genuine Christian heaven of all who 
really believed in and accepted Him as God in His 
Humanity. This is what is meant by the "new 
heaven" of the Book of Revelation. The Lord de- 
parted from the Temple. The old dispensation 
ended, The days were shortened for the elect's 
sake. For the spiritual luminaries of the church's 
heaven were darkened. The sun, moon and stars of 
the spiritual firmament — love, faith and spiritual 
intelligence — failed to shine. They were darkened. 
The end came. 

THE SON OF MAN IN^THE CLOUDS. 

The clouds in which was to be seen the sign of the 
Son of Man are not clouds of earth, but of heaven. 
The Word of God is the divine truth veiled in alle- 
gory. It has a spiritual sense in which truth is in 
its splendor, power and glory; but truth in its inner 
glory must be veiled and accommodated to the 



290 Pearls of Great Price 



reception of finite minds. Thus the Word of God 
comes to us in the cloud-vesture of its literal sense. 
Its natural or literal sense is what is meant by the 
clouds of heaven. In these heavenly clouds the 
Lord has come. He has opened His Word in its 
genuine meaning and doctrine and the very glory 
of the Lord now shines in the clouds of its letter. 
This is what is meant by the Second Coming of the 
Lord. It is a coming that has been made; and like 
all divine revelations, it was made through a human 
instrument prepared for that purpose. The writings 
of the New Church are not the Lord's Second Com- 
ing. That was made in the Word. They are the 
divinely given and illuminated explanations of His 
coming and of the doctrines according to which the 
church of the Second Coming of the Lord is to be 
formed in men's minds and established in the world. 

THE CHURCH OF THE SECOND COMING OF THE 
LORD. 

The New Church is presented to us in the Book of 
Revelation under the symbol of the Holy City, New 
Jerusalem, which St. John saw in vision descending 
from God out of heaven. In one sense, the New 
Church is the New Earth — a new age of spiritual 
enlightenment. This is universal and comprehends 
all the great progressive movements of the world; 
but the New Church in its specific sense is the 
church as a visible body of believers in the doctrines 



Pearls of Great Price 291 



revealed by the Lord in the church writings. It 
begins with a few. It is to grow among many until 
the whole earth is full of the knowledge of the Lord. 
It has one Lord, one faith and one baptism. It is not 
a sect, nor is it a part of the decadent church of the 
past. It is simply the Lord's New Church. It is 
Christian in name and in reality. It is Apostolic. 
It is Catholic. It is just what it is called in the Book 
of Revelation: The Holy City, New Jerusalem. 
And into it shall be gathered all the nations of the 
earth; and in it and through it shall forever reign 
Him who for our salvation did come into the world 
— even the one Lord, God, the Saviour Jesus Christ. 



XXXIV 

JESUS FACES BETRAYAL AND 
DENIAL. 

St. Mark xiv. 10-72. 



The Lord who came as the Word in human form 
received at the hands of the Jewish Church the same 
treatment that they had given the written Word. 
All that He underwent and suffered during this last 
visit to Jerusalem was a dramatization on the plane 
of nature and in His person of the inward hate of 
the Jewish Church toward the spirit of the Word. 
The Lord therefore as the greatest prophet, in His 
betrayal by Judas and in His death represented 
what had already been done to the Word. But 
when the church comes into a state of consumma- 
tion because of its rejection of the Word, there is 
always left in it a remnant who are not involved, as 
to their lives, in the evils and falsities that have led 
to the consummation of the church. This remnant 
love the W T ord and the things of heaven, and form 
therefore the nucleus of the New Church which 
succeeds the old. This doctrine found complete 
exemplification at the end of the Jewish Church. In 
the very beginning of this wonderful chapter of the 

292 



Pearls of Great Price 



293 



gospel according to St. Mark, we have presented to 
us two significant things. (1) It is said: "And the 
chief priests and scribes sought how they might take 
Him by craft and put Him to death. It was a meet- 
ing of the Sanhedrin — the highest body of the 
Jewish church. There assembled, the rulers of the 
church were plotting against the life of the Lord. 
j(2) It is said of the Lord : "And being in Bethany, 

n the house of Simon the leper, as He sat at meat, 
there came a woman having an alabaster box of 
ointment of spikenard, very precious, and she broke 
the box and poured it on His head." In these two 
a scenes we see dramatized the rejection of the Lord 
as the Word made flesh by the rulers of the dead 
church on the one hand and the reception of Him in 
simple faith by the remnant on the other hand. 

In the meeting of the chief priests and scribes in 
Jerusalem, we see the fulfilment of what is written 

n the Psalms: "The kings of the earth set them- 
i Ives, and the rulers take counsel together against 
see Lord and against His Anointed, saying, let us 
theak their bonds asunder and cast away their 
brrds from us." And in Bethany, in the home of 
comon, we see the fulfilment of Isaiah's prophecy: 
SiLo, this is Jehovah, we have waited for Him. This 
f -B our God, let us exult and rejoice in His salvation." 
iThese two scenes were being enacted at the same 
time — one in Jerusalem, which in this instance, 
stands for the church in a state of consummation, 



294 



Pearls of Great Price 



and the other in Bethany, about fifteen furlongs off, 
and which stands for the simple good and simple 
faith of the remnant and the reception of the Lord 
by them and the beginning of a New Church among 
the Gentiles. It is always thus. It is said of the 
Lord: "He came unto His own and His own 
received Him not ; but as many as received Him, to 
them He gave power to become sons of God even to 
them that believed on His name." 

THE BETRAYAL OF THE LORD. 

It is remarkable that Judas, the Lord's betrayer, 
was one of the twelve who reclined around the table 
with the Lord as He ate the passover feast. The cir- 
cumstances of the betrayal are given more fully by 
St. Matthew. He tells us that the Lord said: "He 
that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same 
shall betray me." The hand of Judas was stretched 
out and was dipped with the Lord's hand in the 
dish. This circumstance was fraught with tremen- 
dous significance. The dish referred to contained a 
bitter sauce and it meant, in the passover ritual, the 
bitterness of inward temptation. How full of mean- 
ing this is! The hand of Judas dipped in the dish 
with the hand of the Lord, dramatized the bitter 
suffering that the powers of darkness which it repre- 
sented, would inflict upon the Lord in the final hour 
of His combat against them. For the hand of Judas 
was the symbol of the power of hell; for Satan had 



Pearls of Great Price 



295 



entered the heart of Judas and put in it the thought 
of betraying Him. And so we get back of Judas to 
what Judas represented; and this is what concerns 
us; for we have nothing to do with Judas as an 
individual, but we have everything to do with what 
he represents. Black as was his crime, still we must 
think of the hells and not of Judas; and above all 
we must learn that the unregenerate heart today is 
capable of the same betrayal of the Lord. The hand 
of Judas represented the power of hell. It was that 
power, which had grown through the millenniums of 
man's moral decline, until it threatened the destruc- 
tion of the human race and the very integrity of the 
heavens, that the Lord came to overthrow. Thus 
St. John in his epistle says: "For this purpose the 
Son of God was manifested that He might destroy 
the works of the devil. " This was redemption. And 
it was effected by the Lord alone. Thus the hand of 
Judas, while it stood for the power of hell for all the 
destructive forces of evil, the hand of the Lord, in 
the same dish, stood for the Divine Power of the 
Word made flesh, brought forth in the Lord's Hu- 
manity for its complete overthrow. 

The betrayal of Jesus was therefore something 
apart from the individual character of Judas, just as 
the denial of Him was a thing apart from the per- 
sonal character of Peter. The church writings give 
us the true understanding of the Lord's betrayal and 
its significance. They say: "His being betrayed by 



296 



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Judas signified that He was betrayed by the Jewish 
nation, with whom the Word then was; for Judas 
represented that nation. His being seized and con- 
demned by the chief priests and elders, signified 
that this was done by the whole of that church. 
Their scourging Him, spitting in His face, smiting 
Him and striking Him on the head with a reed, 
signified that they did the like to the Word in 
respect to its divine truths, which all treat of the 
Lord. Their putting on Him a crown of thorns 
signified that they falsified and adulterated those 
truths. Their dividing His garments and casting 
lots for His vesture signified that they dispersed all 
truths of the Word, but not its spiritual sense . . 
. Their crucifying Him signified that they profaned 
the whole Word." Judas w T as the one through 
whom all this was brought about. Back of him as 
the representative of the Jewish Church, was hell — 
all of whose hate and spleen was drawn forth by the 
Lord and conquered by the passion of the Cross. 
The apostle states this clearly: "For by death, He 
conquered him who had the power of death// The 
betrayal of the Lord was the beginning of hell's 
final offensive; and the Lord permitted all the hells 
to assault Him; He drew them out, and then by His 
passion, which seemed hell's victory, He vanquished 
the powers of darkness, subjugated hell and thus 
delivered man from its power. Thus the Lord's 
hand prevailed against the hand of Judas, and his 



Pearls of Great Price 



297 



very betrayal of the Lord was turned into* triumph 
over all the powers of evil. 

THE LAST SUPPER. 

The Feast of the Passover commemorated the 
deliverance of the children of Israel from the hand 
of the destroying angel. Blood — the blood of the 
paschal lamb, was sprinkled upon the doors and 
lintels of the houses of the Israelites, seeing which 
the destroying angel passed over. The feast of the 
passover commemorated this event. It represented 
the divine redemption of the human race by Him 
whose blood was shed for all. The blood is the life; 
and the shedding of the Lord's blood on the Cross 
was the symbol of the life He laid down for us. He 
came to give His life, a ransom for many. He laid 
down the life of His maternal humanity. This was 
His great sacrifice. He was the true paschal lamb. 
His precious blood was shed for us. "He tasted 
death for every man." He died that we might live. 
This thought does not involve the idea of the 
vicarious atonement ; but it does involve the idea of 
the at-one-ment. For in laying down the life of His 
maternal humanity, the Lord brought down in its 
stead the life of the Infinite Love and this substi- 
tuted the Divine Humanity in the place of the 
maternal humanity. This is the true doctrine of 
substitution. Through this substitution of the 
Divine Humanity in the stead of the maternal 



298 Pearls of Great Price 



humanity, He became the Lamb of God which 
taketh away the sins of the world. The Feast of the 
Passover represented, therefore, the redemption of 
man by the shedding of the blood — the life, of the 
Son of Mary and the reception in its stead of the 
life of God by w T hich He as to His glorified Human- 
ity, became the Son of God, who now gives us His 
flesh to eat and His blood to drink that He may 
dwell in us and that we may abide in Him. 

THE HOLY SUPPER. 

The passover symbolizes the Lord's work of re- 
demption. The Holy Supper symbolizes the work 
of salvation. The passover passes into the Holy 
Supper and finds its completion in that great Sacra- 
ment of the Word and Church. The Holy Supper 
is a perpetual memorial of redemption and the chan- 
nel of the Lord's saving grace. It took in the 
Christian Church, the passover in the Jewish 
Church. In instituting this supper, the Lord called 
the bread His body and the wine His blood. There 
is a divine reality here. His body is His Divine 
Good and His blood is His Divine Truth; and while 
these are not material, yet they are divinely real. 
His Divine Good and Divine Truth constitute His 
Divine Humanity. They are the real divine flesh 
and blood of the Lord, which all who come worthily 
to the Lord's table may really eat and drink. So 
that when the bread and wine are duly consecrated 



Pearls of Great Price 



299 



by the minister repeating over them the Lord's own 
words of institution, while they remain bread and 
wine, yet are by that act lifted out of all relation to 
ordinary bread and wine and become, by consecra- 
tion, the correspondents, the bread of His Divine 
Good and the wine of His Divine Truth — His flesh 
and blood; and when reverently received effect 
presence with the Lord and conjoin to Him. He 
becomes actually and personally present in this 
Sacrament. It thus becomes an outward and visible 
sign of an inward and invisible grace. He is present 
with all the fulness of His redemption. For, as we 
are taught: "The Lord is present in the Holy Sup- 
per both as to His Divinity and as to His Human- 
ity.'' The Holy Supper then is not a mere form. 
It is a divinely ordained and provided channel of the 
Lord's saving life. It introduces into heaven. It 
consociates with angels. It conjoins the soul with 
the Lord. It is therefore the Sacrament of salvation 
— -the channel through which comes to the humble 
Christian soul the benefits of the Lord's redemption. 
It is the sign and seal that we are the children of 
God, opening to us the mansions of heaven and con- 
joining us to the Lord. "This is my body." "This 
is my blood." Blessed Sacrament of His presence. 



XXXV 
JESUS ON THE CROSS. 
St. Mark xv. 1-47 



The Lord had looked forward to the passion of 
the cross. St. Paul, in writing of the passion, says of 
the Lord: "For the glory that was set before Him, 
He endured the cross, despising the shame." And at 
the time of the Transfiguration, we are told that 
Moses and Elias, who were present on the Mount, 
"talked with Him about His decease which He 
should accomplish, at Jerusalem and His coming 
glory." When the Lord made this visit to Jerusa- 
lem, He knew what He must suffer. And yet He 
went calmly on to the end. His death was to be 
His real triumph. He said on one occasion to His 
disciples: "He that saveth his life shall lose it, but 
he that loseth his life for my sake and the gospel 
shall save it." This was all true in an infinitely 
greater degree of Him who came to give His life a 
ransom for the world. For His life — the life He 
gave, was the life that was proper to Him as the Son 
of Mary — His hereditary life — the life, which if He 
had not laid it down, would have made redemption 
impossible. 

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Pearls of Great Price 301 

From the manger to the cross, Jesus was laying 
clown this life. He took it upon Himself that He 
might be able through it to draw near to the evil 
powers, receive their assaults and overcome them. 
This He did daily. The passion of the cross was only 
the last act in the divine drama of redemption. It 
was the last and greatest temptation; for in the 
tragedy of Calvary we see hell's last and final 
offensive. But the Lord was triumphant. He, by 
His passion, fully accomplished the purpose of His 
coming in the flesh. For, there on the cross and in 
all that led up to the final hour, He drew out the 
hells into an expression of all the hate they were 
capable of. Had He then saved Himself, hell would 
have triumphed and redemption would have been 
defeated. Here is where we see the meaning of the 
cross. Jesus could have saved Himself. The charge 
of the mob was not true — "He saved others ; Him- 
self He cannot save." In the garden He said: 
"Think ye not that I could pray to my Father and 
He would give me twelve legions of angels?" He 
came not to save Himself. He came to conquer the 
hells, and His passion, which to outward appear- 
ance, was His defeat, was really His final victory. 
"By death He conquered death, that is to say, the 
devil, and delivered those who for fear of death 
were all their lifetime in bondage." Here was His 
great sacrifice. He said: "No man taketh my life 
from me. I lay it down of myself : for I have power 



302 Pearls of Great Price 

to lay it down and to take it up again. This com- 
mandment have I received of my Father." He said: 
"Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay 
down his life for his friends." He freely gave His 
life, not only His physical life, but the life of His 
maternal humanity, that He might draw out and 
fully subjugate the powers of evil. This was the 
death that saved the world. And, so in this final 
offensive of the hells, He gave up His life — freely 
gave it up; but in doing so He brought down trie 
divine life in its stead, by which He judged, over- 
came and fully subjugated the hells, remanding its 
legions to the world of darkness and holding them 
in eternal subjection to the majesty of His Divine 
Humanity. This doctrine wreathes the cross with 
garlands of glory and makes it live forever as the 
symbol of the Lord's final conflict and the sign of 
His everlasting victory. For to quote the Doctrines: 
"By the passion of the cross, the Lord fully glorified 
His Human and fully subdued the hells." This was 
redemption. 

THE CHOICE OF BARABBAS. 

All the steps that led up to the crucifixion of the 
Lord were outward signs of the working and ploting 
of the unseen powers of evil against which the Lord 
w r as fighting and from which He came to redeem and 
save the world. The church had come to its end. It 
had rejected the Word, and this fallen state of the 



Pearls of Great Price 



303 



church was an open door through which hell entered 
and gained influence and power. The supreme hour 
of judgment had come. A mob had gathered. It 
was the day on which the governor released one 
prisoner to the people. Barabbas was a murderer. 
Jesus was the Christ. Think of these two! Pilate 
puts the whole matter up to the people. As to Jesus, 
He had gone about doing good. Not one single 
charge could they truthfully bring against Him. As 
to Barabbas, they all knew that he was guilty of 
sedition and murder. But the chief priests and 
scribes persuaded the multitude that they should 
ask for the release of Barabbas and for the crucifix- 
ion of Jesus. What a choice this was ! But it is ever 
the choice the church makes when it comes to its 
end. Pilate's question as recorded by St. Matthew: 
"Whether of the twain will ye that I release unto 
you," reminds us of the words of Moses to the 
people: "Behold I have set before thee this day life 
and good, and death and evil." The Lord Jesus was 
the incarnate form of life and goodness. He stood 
before them awaiting their choice. Barabbas was 
the incarnate form of evil and falsity. He too stood 
before them. The sinless Saviour of the world on the 
one hand, and the incarnate form of evil on the 
other! And instigated by the rulers of the church, 
the multitude asked for the release of Barabbas. It 
was the choice of evil rather than goodness — of 
death rather than life. And what did it mean? It 



304 Pearls of Great Price 



meant that they were willing and glad to exalt and 
give freedom in their hearts to the very evil which 
they freed in Barabbas, and to kill in themselves the 
good as represented in the person of the Lord. The 
end of the church takes place in the hearts of its 
members before the end is seen in outward form. 
Evil had already been chosen as the governing 
principle of life in the hearts of the Jews; good had 
already been rejected in their minds, and their 
choice of Barabbas and rejection of Christ, simply 
gave outward form and expression to their inward 
state. 

But we must remember that unregenerate human 
nature is the same everywhere. We are capable of 
doing spiritually what the Jews did naturally. 
There is laid upon each one of us the responsibility 
of choosing between good and evil. Our very moral 
freedom compels us to the choice of good or evil. 
And this choice is first made by one's internal man 
and afterwards by one's external man. This is what 
is meant by the chief priests and scribes persuading 
the people to ask for the release of Barabbas and the 
crucifixion of Jesus. A man is good or evil in his 
internal first and afterwards in his external. Thus 
when the internal loves and chooses evil, it has no 
difficulty in persuading the external to act in har- 
mony with it. Both Christ and Barabbas are bound 
in our own minds, and our inward and deliberate 
choice sets one or the other free. Which shall it be? 



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305 



To choose Christ is to choose the good and the true 
— to give freedom to what is of heaven, and to have 
life guided and moulded by goodness and truth. To 
choose Barabbas is to choose evil and falsity and 
give them release to guide and mould life. To each 
one of us there comes every day the question: 
"What will ye do with Jesus which is called Christ 7 '? 
And life in its final outcome will be determined by 
the free choice we make between Christ and 
Barabbas. Character is formed by the moral choice 
we make of the principle that is to govern us. There 
is no escape from the responsibility of living, What 
we shall be in the spiritual world will be determined 
by our free and deliberate choice of good or evil in 
this present life. 

THE MOCKING OF JESUS. 

The mockeries and indignities to which the Lord 
was subjected represented the treatment the written 
Word received at the hands of the Jewish church, 
This can be understood only as one stops to consider 
the fact of the real identity of the written Word and 
the incarnate Word. There is only one Word of 
God. Jesus Christ was the Word of God made flesh. 
The Bible, as the Jews had it, was that very Word in 
human language. The incarnate Word was the 
written Word fulfilled and acted out. As the Lord 
lived the Word into His life, His life became a 
revelation of the Word and a condemnation of the 



306 Peakls of Great Price 



inward and outward evils of the Jewish Church. 
Here we may see that the treatment the Lord 
received at the hands of the Jewish Church repre- 
sented their treatment of the Word. This is what is 
meant in the writings of the church where it is said 
that as the greatest prophet, the Lord in His trial, 
condemnation, and the profane mockeries heaped 
upon Him, and His final crucifixion, represented the 
state of the church. This is what is meant by the 
Lord bearing iniquities. He endured, in His sacred 
person, the effects of the evils of the fallen church 
and world. Think of the indignities that were 
heaped upon Him! They clothed Him with purple; 
they put a crown of thorns on His head; they smote 
Him on the head with a reed and they spit upon 
Him. In all these dreadful mockeries and indig- 
nities hell was being drawn out in all its hate, spleen 
and diabolism. But these acts spiritually under- 
stood, represented what had been done to the Word. 
Think of this! The Lord's own robe represented the 
letter of the Word, and to remove His robe and put 
another robe on Him, represented how the church 
had falsified the meaning of the letter of the Word 
and interpreted it to suit and favor its evils. The 
mock royalty He was invested with, represented the 
church's inward derision of the divine truth — its 
hatred of it, and the substitution of falsity in its 
stead. A crown of thorns was platted and put on 
His head. The Lord's head, represents the divine 



Pearls of Great Price 307 



wisdom in its first principles, as revealed in the 
Scriptures, and personally manifested in Him. 
Thorns stand for falsities, especially for the falsities 
that originate in the sensuous mind. To crown the 
Lord's head with thorns mean that the Jewish 
Church had exalted its own sensuous intelligence 
above the divine wisdom of the Word. By "smiting 
Him on the head with a reed meant that the Jewish 
Church had exalted the power of self-intelligence 
above the very divine wisdom itself and sought, by 
its own power, to destroy the divine truth. By 
spitting upon Him was expressed its utter contempt 
for the divine truth. 

Thus the w T hole scene was a symbol — revelation 
of the inwardly evil and fallen state of the Jewish 
Church. And Jesus bore — that is, revealed, in thus 
submitting to these profane mockeries, the whole 
state of the church. 

THE CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS. 

Golgotha, where the Lord was crucified, and 
which means "the place of a skull," is a fitting 
symbol of the state of the church at the time of its 
end. The empty skull — the ghastly remnant of the 
noblest part of the human body — how fully it rep- 
resented the Lord's Word, which the consummated 
Jewish church had emptied of its living spiritual 
contents! This was what the Lord meant when He 
said to the Jews: "Ye have made void (empty) the 



308 Pearls of Great Price 



commandments of God by the traditions of the 
elders. This state was the place of a skull. Thus 
the crucifixion of the Lord represented the last 
state of the church — the church's utter rejection of 
the Word. Hell had reached its limit. It did seem 
to be the hour of its victory. But instead of hell's 
victory, the crucifixion was hell's final overthrow. 
For He who was crucified, dead and buried, rose on 
the third day, triumphant over all evil and ascended 
on high, King of kings and Lord of lords, with all 
power in heaven and on earth and holding the keys 
of death and of hell. 



XXXVI 

JESUS TRIUMPHANT OVER DEATH. 
St. Mark xvi. 1-20. 



Since the Lord suffered under Pontius Pilate, was 
crucified, dead, and buried, and on the third day 
arose from the dead, and forty days afterwards 
ascended into heaven, we can see that it is no mere 
sentiment or fancy that leads us to see in the reviv- 
ing life of grass and trees and flowers, the parable 
and prophecy of immortality. The God of the 
gospel is at the same time the God of Nature; and 
for those who cannot read, or reading cannot under- 
stand, God writes out each year in the death and 
revival of the green things of earth, the coming of a 
spring time that shall never fade. Through the 
sight of the clean, washed earth and fresh blue sky, 
and the songs of birds, the Lord puts new pulses of 
life in those who are growing old, and utters prophe- 
cies of the new life that one day shall rise trium- 
phant out of what is old and worn out — of the 
beautiful world and life that lie beyond the see??iings 
of this world, where those who have grown old here 

309 



310 



Pearls of Great Price 



shall grow young again and go on forever approach- 
ing the spring time of life. 

It is thus that the church made new by the Lord's 
coming in the spiritual sense of His Word, puts an 
undying optimism in the hearts of all who accept its 
message. They see that winter does not last; that 
new buds sprout in the ice-covered branches; that 
the flowers spring up through the snow; and in all 
these things they learn to think of life as a sacred 
thing — an undying thing and of the grave itself as 
only the passageway to life eternal. 

Before the Lord came, men needed proofs of im- 
mortality. They longed and groped for it; but the 
wisest of the ancient world died guessing that it 
might be true, that if a man died he would live 
again. But when the Lord came, He brought life 
and immortality to light. He said: "I have come 
that you might have life and that you might have it 
more abundantly." In the Upper Room He who 
had died manifested Himself to His disciples in a 
way that convinced them that He was truly alive; 
for their eyes were opened. They looked upon and 
handled Him. They knew it was He, and all per- 
plexity fled. 

They did not argue, nor reason, nor draw con- 
clusions. Joy does not try to be logical, nor is it 
always articulate. It is simply said: "Then were 
the disciples glad when they saw T the Lord." 



Pearls of Great Price 



311 



CHRISTIANITY THE PROOF OF CHRIST'S 
RESURRECTION. 

The gospel story has come down to us from the 
men who saw and heard. It does not reason with 
us. It simply states the facts. And Christianity as 
it exists today is the one convincing proof of the 
fact that He who said to the sorrowing sisters of 
Lazarus: "I am the resurrection and the life/' did 
really Himself rise from the dead. Is not the Chris- 
tian Church in all its branches, a living demonstra- 
tion of the Lord's triumph over death? Its very 
existence is inconceivable apart from His resurrec- 
tion. For it was not His preaching, His miracles — 
His death — it was none of these that banded the 
disciples together and that sent them forth to found 
the Christian Church. It was the fact that after 
witnessing His death and burial, they found Him 
alive again. Those who reject the historical fact of 
the Lord's resurrection as recorded by the four 
Evangelists, and its complement, His Ascension, are 
called upon to explain the rise and spread of the 
Christian Church, Deny His resurrection and 
ascension, and the Christian Church is an effect 
without a cause. Do not our celebrations of the 
Fourth of July point back to and prove the fact of 
the Declaration of Independence? Did it not have 
its rise in that event? So instead of beginning in the 
ordinary way with the early documents and arguing 



312 Pearls of Great Price 



down, is it not a more simple and more satisfactoiy 
process to begin with the world as we find it today 
and argue back to the first Easter morning when He 
who had been crucified, dead and buried, stood alive 
outside the tomb? Is the world a better world today 
than it was that day in a.d. 112, when Pliny, the 
Roman governor of Bythynia, wrote to his imperial 
master about "those fanatics who came together 
early, the first day of the week, to worship Christ as 
God and to bind themselves by the Sacramentum to 
purity of life? To ask such a question is to answer 
it . The world-war has caused many hearts to doubt ; 
but after all Christianity, which is the proof of 
Christ's resurrection, will end in the enthronement 
of Him who triumphed over death, and out of all 
the carnage, brutalities and blood soaked fields, 
shall arise a new type of Christianity, and a new 
form of civilization — a civilization which shall spell 
out in large letters the Christianity of the four 
gospels. For what means this awful struggle of 
right against might but the triumph of the church 
whose very rise was due to the rising from the dead 
of Him who is life? The greatest nations on the 
earth are fighting, not an offensive, but a defensive 
war. And in the midst of it all and notwithstanding 
it all, in the world today, the resurrection life of 
Jesus Christ is the mainspring in the world's prog- 
ress, and is the guarantee of the ultimate triumph of 
Christianity. Yes, the church, to which the Lord 



Pearls of Great Price 



313 



has come again and in which the new heart of 
brotherhood is palpitating with resurrection life, 
stands forth, the sign, seal and proof of the fact that 
He who died for our sins, rose again for our justifi- 
cation. 

THE RESURRECTION BODY OF THE LORD. 

What was the Lord's resurrection? What was His 
resurrection Body? was it material? or was it 
Divine? A careful and intelligent reading of the 
accounts given by the evangelists of the post- 
resurrection appearings of the Lord can leave no 
doubt in the mind as to the reality of the body in 
which He appeared. But the accounts make it 
equally evident that His body was not material. 
The accounts introduce a class of facts that show 
His resurrection Body to be entirely different from 
the body that was crucified and laid in Joseph's 
new tomb. The church writings tell us that the 
Lord " dissipated in the tomb all that remained from 
the mother/' This clearly indicates that His resur- 
rection Body was not material. The matters of the 
crucified body were put off. What then? Did Christ 
rise merely in a spiritual body as man does? No. 
For we are told that, different from a mere man, the 
Lord rose with His whole body. How are we to 
reconcile these statements? The reconciliation is to 
be found in a rational understanding of the process 
of His glorification. 



314 



Pearls of Great Price 



In assuming human nature, the Lord clothed His 
Divinity with all the qualities of the heavens, the 
world of spirits and of man in the natural world. 
These qualities from first to last, were finite. 
Interior to all these qualities was the very divine 
substance and life — the Father that dwelt in Him. 
Now, the Lord's glorification did not consist in His 
transmuting these finite qualities into divinity. 
Such a thing is unthinkable. It consisted in the 
Lord expelling them entirely, and replacing them 
with divine substance and qualities on the same 
plane. This process was effected, first in those 
degrees of finite life He assumed from the heavens, 
and from the intermediate world of spirits, and 
lastly in expelling them from the senso-corporeal 
and material degrees. At the time of His crucifixion 
all this was done, with the exception of the degree 
of life that belonged to the body. The body was 
then glorified by the dissipation of its matters and 
the coming down in their stead of the divine sub- 
stance. Thus He rose with His whole body, but it 
was not material. It was a Divine-Natural Body. 
It had the same form, but was of different substance 
from the body that was laid in the tomb. This is 
evident from all the descriptions given of His post 
resurrection manifestations to His disciples. He had 
flesh and bones as no spirit has. Not that spirits 
have not flesh and bones; for the}' have spiritual 
bodies, but His flesh and bones are Divine. He rose 



Pearls of Great Price 



315 



the Divine Man. He was and is Jehovah even as to 
His body. Redemption would not have been com- 
plete without this glorification of the body; for un- 
less the Lord had brought down the divine life and 
organized it on the planes of the body, there would 
have been left open channels through which the hells 
could have entered and destroyed the very ultimate 
life of man. Now that is impossible. The Lord's 
resurrection Body is the very Divine Natural 
through which He gives us life and protection 
against the assaults of hell. 

THE SPIRITUAL LESSON. 

While it is a matter of supreme importance to 
know the true doctrine of the Lord's resurrection, 
yet one may know the doctrine and still not realize 
the meaning of it in one's own life. The Lord rises, 
as from the dead, in each one of us when by the in- 
fluence of the Holy Spirit, there is awakened in us 
the consciousness of Him and of the things that 
belong to His kingdom. This is what St. Paul calls 
"knowing the Lord and the power of His resurrec- 
tion." And when He rises in the soul He empowers 
the soul to take up serpents, to drink deadly things 
without hurt and to lay hands on the sick and re- 
cover them; to cast out devils and to speak with new 
tongues. These are the signs seen in the lives of all 
in whom the Lord rises in the power of the new life. 
For think: To cast out devils is to remove evils by 



316 Pearls of Great Price 

shunning them as sins against God; to speak with 
new tongues is to speak the language of the spirit 
and not the language of the flesh — to be gifted with 
new affections and thoughts and a new expression of 
life. To take up serpents is to lift up and redeem the 
sensual things of the mind and body — to bring the 
whole region of the sense life under the control of 
reason and the higher nature. To drink deadly 
things without hurt is to be able to live in the world 
and hear things that are false — to have them enter 
merely the understanding, but not the life. And 
to lay hands on the sick is to bring the truth, in its 
redeeming power into touch, into contact with 
affections that have lost their proper connection 
with the higher mind — thus recovering them and 
restoring all things of life to harmony and order. 
This is the realization of the Lord's resurrection in 
the individual life. 



XXXVII 

JESUS CHRIST OUR REDEEMER 
AND LORD. 

Review. 



In the twenty-sixth chapter of the Book of 
Genesis we are told the interesting story of the 
dwelling of Isaac among the Philistines in the land 
of Gerar; and among many thrilling things we come 
upon this statement: "And Isaac digged again the 
wells of water, which they had digged in the days of 
Abraham his father; for the Philistines had stopped 
them after the death of Abraham. And he called 
their names after the names by which his father had 
called them." 

This statement is fraught with divine significance. 
True historically, it at the same time, in its spiritual 
sense, reveals what has been realized in the history 
of the spiritual life of the Christian Church. Abra- 
ham, while an historic personage, is nevertheless 
used in the drama of revelation to represent the 
infancy of the Lord in His Humanity — the infantile 
period of every human being and the infantile or 
golden, open, plastic and pure state, as to doctrine 
and life, of the Christian Church, This thought 

317 



318 Pearls of Great Price 



lifts him out of what is merely local and racial into 
what is universal. And so thinking of Abraham as 
the representative of the state of the Apostolic 
Church, we may find many interesting spiritual 
facts in the spiritual sense of the verse quoted. 

The Apostolic Church covered a period distinctly 
marked and differenced from the period of the 
church which succeeded. This is clearly recognized 
in the church writings and by all reliable church 
historians. It was the golden age of the Christian 
Church — its Abrahamic period. The distinctly 
Apostolic age of the Christian Church commenced 
with the founding of the church through the 
preaching of the Lord's immediate disciples; and it 
closed immediately after the Council of Nice 325 
a.d. The church was therefore purely Apostolic for 
three hundred years. 

During this period there universally prevailed 
throughout the then Christian world, the worship 
of the one God in thfe person of His only begotten 
Son, Jesus Christ. There was no thought of three 
equally divine persons in God. 

The Apostles' Creed makes no mention of a son 
born from eternity, nor of a trinity of persons in 
God. It is true, the Apostolic Church had no clearty 
defined doctrine of the Incarnation, other than the 
fact itself, nor did it see clearly the relation of the 
Divine and the Human, the Father and the Son, in 
the person of the Lord Christ, The Christological 



Pearls of Great Price 319 



and Trinitarian controversies and formulations 
.were of a later date; but the early church accepted 
the fact of the Incarnation and believed in and wor- 
shipped the Father as revealed in and by the Son; 
and by the Son of God, the Apostolic Church meant 
Jesus Christ, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost 
and born of the Virgin Mary. 

We meet with the Latin word persona, which 
afterwards came to mean a person as we now under- 
stand and the word person first in Tertullian's 
treatise against Praxeas. And we meet with its 
equivalent in Greek, hypotases, first in Origen, the 
great Christian teacher of Alexandria. Later on we 
find Tertullian employing the word trinitas (trinity) 
and Origen using the word trias (trinity). Here 
was the beginning of the doctrine, both in the west- 
ern and eastern branches of the Apostolic Church, 
of the tripersonality of God so strongly set forth in 
the Council of Nice by Athanasius and finally 
adopted by that General Council, Athanasius 
emphasized the distinctness of the Son from the 
Father, while he at the same time sought to extab- 
lish a "unity of essence." He taught, contrary to 
the Apostle's Creed, that the Son of God is and has 
been from eternity of the same essence as the Father. 
It was Athanasius who had inserted in the Nicene 
Creed the word homoouisos (of one substance with) 
which was intended to exclude both the Sabellian 
and Arian view and teaching. Out of this Council 



320 Pearls of Great Price 



came the Nicene Creed, in which, while it does not 
clearly state it in terms, was contained the seed 
that later took root, grew and finally bloomed into 
the Athanasian Creed, in which each name of the 
Holy Trinity is made to stand for a person. Hence 
arose in the Christian Church the doctrine that 
while God is one in essence He is three in person. 
And out of this tripersonal trinity there arose ulti- 
mately a tritheism. Men said one God with their 
lips and thought of three in their minds. 

What could follow such a crime as this rending 
asunder the unity of God in Christ, but the end, on 
earth, of the Apostolic Church and the rise of a 
church that was Christian in name only? What I 
am endeavoring to do is to show that while the 
Apostolic Church did not develop a distinct system 
of theology, it nevertheless was the true Christian 
Church of the letter of the Gospels. It knew from 
the Lord's own mouth that He and the Father are 
one and that He sent the Holy Spirit forth from 
Himself from the Father. For He said: ''The 
Father and I are one." "He that hath seen Me hath 
seen the Father/ ' It knew from the words of the 
angel: "The Holy Thing that shall be born of Thee 
shall be called the Son of God," that the Lord's 
Humanity, which was conceived by the Holy Ghost 
and born of the Virgin Mary, was the Son of God. 
It knew that the Holy Spirit was given by the Lord 
Christ; for "He breathed upon the disciples and 



Pearls of Great Price 



321 



said, receive ye the Holy Ghost. " It knew that the 
Lord came into the world to subdue the hells, for 
St. John had written: "For this purpose was the 
Son of God manifested that He might destroy the 
works of the devil." It knew that the Christian life 
was not attained by faith alone; for the Lord had 
said to the young ruler: "If thou wouldst enter into 
life, keep the commandments/ ' It knew that the 
Word treated of the Lord; for He had said: "Search 
the Scriptures for they are they that testify of 
Me;" and again: "He opened to them in all the 
Scriptures, the things concerning Himself." Thus 
the Apostolic Church held, in simple childlike faith, 
the three essentials of the church. It did not dog- 
matize; it simply believed, preached, converted men 
to, and lived these simple doctrines of Christianity, 
The holding of these simple doctrines by the 
Apostolic Church is what, in the internal sense, is 
meant by the wells that were digged in the days of 
Abraham. What lovely wells they were! But when 
the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds were formulated, 
these wells were stopped up with earth — stopped up 
by the earthly interpretations of the church that w T as 
Christian in name only. After the rise of the Post 
Nicene Church, Father, and Son and Holy Spirit — 
the lovely well of Abraham's day — the thought of 
the unity of the Godhead in Jesus Christ was stop- 
ped up by the earth of a tripersonal explanation of 
the trinity. Philistines put earth into this well. The 



322 Pearls of Great Price 



early teaching that Christ's Humanity was the Son 
of God, provided from eternity, but born in time — 
this well of Abraham's day, was filled up with the 
earth of the doctrine of the "eternal generation of 
the Son" — thus of a Son of God, distinct as to per- 
son, from the Father, who separate from the Father, 
took upon Himself human nature by a hypostatic 
union with it in the womb of Mary. 



"Isaac digged again the wells of water which 
they had digged in the days of Abraham his father," 
means that the Lord opened those truths which had 
existed among the Ancients. . . . Wells of 
water mean the truths of knowledges. — Arcana. 



XXXVIII 

JESUS CHRIST OUR REDEEMER 
AND LORD. 

Review 



The early teaching that the Old Testament 
treated everywhere of the Lord — what a well of 
living water it was! But earth was thrown into it, 
and it was stopped up by the earthly and literal 
interpretations given to it. The Apostolic teaching, 
that Christ came to "destroy the works of the 
devil" — to reconcile man to God and deliver him 
from spiritual enemies — what a wonderful well it 
was! But earth was put into it. The earthly ideas 
of men filled it up with the teachings that He came 
to make an atonement to God the Father for the 
sins of the world; to appease His wrath and satisfy 
the claims of His justice. The simple teaching of 
the Apostolic Church that the Christian life con- 
sisted in "repentance toward God and faith in the 
Lord Jesus Christ" — in keeping, by Divine help, 
the Lord's commandments — this well, dug by 
Abraham, was filled up with earth, by the teaching 
that man is saved either by the magic of the Sacra- 
ments or by mere faith alone. 



323 



324 



Pearls of Great Price 



It was thus that all wells of Abraham's digging 
were filled up with earth. The true knowledge of the 
Lord Jesus Christ as Redeemer and Lord was lost. 
There did not remain a well that was not stopped up 
with earth. The end of the church that was Chris- 
tion in name only came, and a new age of the church 
succeeded. 

THE SECOND COMING OF THE LORD. 

The church had been moving on to its judgment; 
and in the middle of the eighteenth century it 
occurred. It was executed in the world of spirits 
where were congregated, in imaginary heaven, the 
souls of both Roman Catholics and Reformed, who 
while on earth had lived outwardly as Christians, 
but who inwardly were lacking in all the graces of 
regeneration. The Lord by a new revelation opened 
the spiritual sense of His Word. That opening of 
the Word was the second coming of the Lord. And 
as the light of the open W ord of God penetrated the 
imaginary heavens, they were broken up and dissi- 
pated, the simple good people in them being 
gathered into the Apostolic communities which, 
from the close of the Apostolic age, had been re- 
served in the intermediate world and the inwardly 
evil people in them were cast into the hells. 

The Apostolic communities had kept the simple 
faith of the early church. They are meant b}^ the 
souls under the altar. They were in the worship of 



Pearls of Great Price 325 

the Lord. How immense these communities must 
have been: They had waited for the Lord's coming. 
They constituted the church of which He said: 
"The gates of hell shall not prevail against it." And 
when He came in the glory of His Word with a full 
revelation of Himself, they received Him gladly; 
and of all such, after instruction, the Lord formed 
the New Heaven — the Christian heaven — the 
heaven of the Apostolic age. This heaven was 
the Apostolic church in heaven, to which the Lord 
had come in glory, to which the new revelation was 
given, and by which it was crowned and glorified. 
Its simple faith was made full and complete. Its 
eyes were fully opened by the second touch of the 
Lord; but it was still the church that He founded on 
the Word — the church that "revived, stood on its 
feet and drew breath again. " 

From this New Heaven, there descended to men 
on earth the Holy City, New Jerusalem — the 
Heavenly Doctrines by which the Lord commenced, 
among the remnant, the restoration of the Apos- 
tolic church on earth, leading it into the deep things 
of His coming in the Word and gifting it with a new 
quality of life, making it, by rational spiritual 
truths, His new Apostolic church, built on the 
ancient foundation, but gifted with deeper spiritual 
intelligence and a more interior life than was possi- 
ble to it at the time of the Lord's First Coming. 
This is the New Church of divine promise. It is the 



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age of Isaac, who stands for the spiritual Rational. 
For the New Apostolic church is a church that is 
rational from a spiritual background. It is the 
church of the rational age of man. But the New 
Apostolic church does not have to dig new wells. 
All it has to do is to remove the earth from the wells 
that were dug in the earty Apostolic age. For 
instance: The doctrine that there is a trinity in 
God — this well does not have to be dug again. All 
that is needed is for Isaac to remove the earth of tri- 
personalism from it when lo! the water is seen clear 
and beautiful — the truth that "in Jesus Christ 
dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." 
Redemption — this well does not have to be dug 
again. It only needs the earthly matters removed 
from it, and then we see the water of life in it — the 
truth, that the Lord's redemption was the over- 
throw of the powers of darkness. The Word of 
God — this well has been dug — all the New Church 
need do is to take out the earth of a mere literal 
naturalistic interpretation of it, and lo! "with joy 
we draw water from the wells of Salvation." Regen- 
eration — this well has only been stopped up with 
Philistine earth; and when it is unstopped, we see 
regeneration as a new life which the Lord implants 
and grows in all who take up the cross and follow 
Him. And when by the rational truths of the New 
Church, the earth is removed from the old wells, 
there is no need for inventing new names for the well. 



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327 



They are to be called by the old names, but with a 
new understanding of their meaning, even as it is 
said of Isaac: "He called their names after the 
names by which his father had called them." 

Here then we have all things restored, and much 
more than restored, in the Holy City, New Jer- 
usalem. 

JESUS THE LORD. 

Jesus Christ, as He now stands revealed in His 
Divine Humanity, is truly the Lord. He is the 
Jehovah of the Old Testament in a Divine Human- 
ity. He is Lord over all. The Father in Him is the 
Supreme and Originative Divinity, the Son in Him 
is the Divine Humanity that reveals the Father and 
is the medium of the transmission of the divine life 
to angels and men. The Holy Spirit in Him and 
from Him, is the outgoing of His life — the outshin- 
ing of His truth — Christ in procedure, for the regen- 
eration of man. He is truly Lord over all. 

JESUS THE SAVIOUR AND REDEEMER. 

The angel of the Annunciation said: "Thou shalt 
call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people 
from their sins." The Saviourhood of God in Jesus 
Christ was the doctrine around which the early 
church grew. He was the only Saviour. And this 
Saviour was none other than Jehovah. For it is 
written of Him: "That thou mayest know that I, 



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Jehovah, am thy Saviour " "I am Jehovah, the 
Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour." "I am Jehovah, 
and besides me there is no Saviour." He is also the 
Redeemer. "As for your Redeemer, Jehovah 
Zebaoth is His name." "With the mercy of eternity 
will I have mercy on thee, saith Jehovah the 
Redeemer." He shall redeem Israel from all his ini- 
quities, Jehovah Zebaoth is His name, and thy 
Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel." 

It was Jehovah who came into the world, conse- 
quently the Lord Jesus is Jehovah in His Glorified 
Manhood, revealed as the only Saviour and Re- 
deemer. So when we think of all this wonderful 
revelation of the Lord for the rebuilding and glori- 
fying of His church, can we not see that the New 
Church is Apostolic and truly Evangelical, that it is 
not some sect about whose slow growth we are to 
continually worry, that its coming is with the Lord 
and that it comes as fast as we are prepared to 
properly care for the souls the Lord sends to us for 
instruction and culture? Can such a doctrine of the 
Lord and redemption as we are privileged to preach 
fail? It is sheer madness to think such a thing. 
Swedenborg in closing a wonderfully interesting 
letter to Dr. Beyer, in which he discusses the 
teaching of the Apostles' Creed and points out the 
fact that in that creed no mention is made of a Son 
born from eternity, and that the doctrine of a Son 
born from eternity was adopted in the Xicene 



Pearls of Great Price 329 

Council because there could be found no other way 
of refuting and expelling Arianism from the church 
says: U I therefore adhere to the Apostolic Church." 
Can we do better than to adhere to it and be thank- 
ful for its restoration and the opening of the Word 
of God in it? 



XXXIX 
THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
St. John i. 35-51; Acts viii. 26-39. 



THE LAMB OF GOD. 

The mission of John the baptist was at its end. 
The mission of Jesus was beginning. The baptism 
of the Lord was the crowning act of John's mission. 
The baptism of John had served its purpose, for by 
his baptism with water unto repentance, a connec- 
tion between heaven and earth had been effected 
and preparation made in both worlds for the Lord 
and His mission as the Redeemer and Saviour. The 
connection of heaven and earth being effected by 
John's baptism of men, a real opening of heaven 
was afterwards effected by the baptism of the Lord. 
His baptism represented the glorification of His 
Humanity by which it became the immediate and 
direct medium of communication between heaven 
and earth and the one divine Mediator between the 
invisible Divinity and finite humanity. Hence 
John's mission ended. The ending of John's work is 
meant by these words, "John stood." The old 
ended. It stood. Jesus' mission commenced; and 

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331 



its real beginning is meant by these words: And 
looking on Jesus as he walked he (John) said: 
"Behold the Lamb of God." 

The Lamb of God is the divine innocense which 
Jesus became in His Humanity. All that belonged 
to the earthly heredity of the Lord was put away by 
His glorification; and in the stead of the life He laid 
down, He received the life of the divine love and 
became in form the very divine innocence itself — 
the Lamb of God whom we may all behold, and 
beholding, have our sins taken away, 

FOLLOWING THE LORD. 

Following the Lord in the days of His earthly 
ministry meant being His disciples — learners of the 
wonderful truths He revealed to men. It also meant 
abiding and journeying with Him from place to 
place as He went about doing good. Now, we know 
Him no longer in a physical way. He has gone away 
from physical touch with man; but He is present 
spiritually; and we become His true followers when 
we learn the truth about Him, when we acknowl- 
edge Him as the "true God and eternal life" and 
follow the truth of His Word wherever it leads. All 
who believe in Him and do His commandments are 
His followers. Of the two disciples of John to whom 
He pointed out the Lord it is said: "Jesus turned 
and saw them following Him." This act of Jesus in 
turning to the two disciples who were following Him 



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is full of spiritual significance. As a matter of fact, 
the Lord is always turned toward us; for He loves 
all men, but when man turns to the Lord, the 
appearance is that the Lord turns toward Him. 
The real truth is the Lord in hidden ways ever seeks 
to turn human minds to Himself. His love draws us, 
and we, in freedom, suffer ourselves to be drawn. 
He leads us, and we consent to be led. The Lord's 
face is the symbol of what He is in His very inmost 
love; and when the Lord is said to turn His face 
toward man, there is meant the reception by man of 
the Lord's love and wisdom. The reception of these 
two principles constitutes one a follower of the 
Lord. And there is always an object in this follow- 
ing of Him. "What seek ye?" was the question 
Jesus asked the two disciples. The object of their 
following Him was what the Lord was seeking to 
bring forth. It is an important question. Why are 
we following the Lord? Is it that we may obtain 
some earthly good? or is it that we may learn His 
way of life? "What seek ye?" "Where dwellest 
thou?" was the question the two disciples asked the 
Lord. Jesus answered : "Come and see." It is then 
said: "They came and saw where He dwelt and 
abode with Him that day." Spiritually dwelling 
relates to a state of goodness in the will, so that the 
disciple's question: "Where dwellest thou?" rep- 
resents the desire of the mind to know something of 
the goodness to which the Lord's truth leads. But 



Pearls of Great Price 333 



this can be known only as men's will and under- 
standing act together. He must come — that is an 
act of the will. Man conies to the Lord in his will, 
but he sees where the Lord dwells by his under- 
standing. The Lord invites us to come and He 
invites us to see. He calls both will and under- 
standing. 

It is said: "They came and saw where He dwelt 
and abode with Him that day ; and it was about the 
tenth hour.' 7 To abide with Jesus in His dwelling 
place is to come into a state of goodness and truth — 
to be settled in such a state. It is always about the 
tenth hour when this takes place; for ten stands for 
remains — the germs of heaven in the mind. It is the 
awakening of these remnants of heaven in the soul 
that leads one to follow the Lord and to abide with 
Him. Thus it is said : "It was about the tenth hour." 

NATHAN AEL UNDER THE FIG TREE. 

Andrew, Peter, Philip and Nathanael, each of 
whom became a follower of the Lord, stand for the 
principles of the religious life that enter one by one 
the regenerating mind and prepare it for the vision 
of the open heaven and the ascending and descend- 
ing of the angels upon the Son of Man. Nathanael 
stood under the fig tree when Philip came to him 
saying: "We have found Him of whom Moses in 
the law and the prophets did write." All the trees 
mentioned in the Bible stand for definite spiritual 



334 Pearls of Great Price 

* 

states of mind, as, for instance, the olive for love to 
the Lord, the vine for spiritual intelligence and the 
fig for simple good of life. To stand under the fig 
tree is, spiritually, to be in simple good. All who are 
in this state are spiritually seen by the Lord. Thus 
Andrew, Peter and Philip are principles that lead 
ultimately to the state represented by Nathanael — 
to goodness of life. When goodness of life is 
formed, out of it comes the acknowledgment of the 
Lord as the Son of God and the King of Israel. And 
because of this, the heaven of the internal mind is 
opened, and to it (the internal mind) is granted the 
vision of the inner glory of the Word — the Son of 
Man, with its ascending and descending degrees of 
truth; for those degrees of the divine truth are the 
angels of God ascending and descending upon the 
Son of Man. 

THE STORY OF THE EUNUCH. 

Ethiopia was outside the land of Canaan, but 
the Eunuch who was of that country, knew of the 
Living God of Israel, for he went up to Jerusalem 
to worship. He was returning home. And as he sat 
in his chariot he read from the prophet Isaiah the 
wonderful prophecy concerning the Lord and His 
redemptive work. While the Eunuch was reading- 
Philip was being carried by the spirit of the Lord to 
where the Eunuch was that he might open to his 
mind the meaning of the prophecy and lead him to 



Pearls of Great Price 



335 



Jesus Christ whose person and work Isaiah so 
graphically depicted in his prophecy. Joining him- 
self to the Eunuch, Philip "preached unto him 
Jesus, and afterwards baptized him and sent him 
hack to his own land a Christian." The points of 
interest in this story are many; but there are only 
a few that space permits us to mention. 

CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

We all recall the words of the Lord to the Jews: 
"Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have 
eternal life, and they are they that testify of Me." 
The whole Word treats of the Lord; for the Lord is 
the Word. 

To many minds the doctrine that the Word is the 
Lord is difficult to receive; but that is because they 
form their ideas of the Word from its letter. The 
great mission of the Lord's New Church lies in the 
direction of a complete reversal of the view-point in 
regard to the Word. Until men are brought to, at 
least, some degree of spiritual understanding regard- 
ing the structure of the Scriptures they can never 
rise to anything approaching a true concept of the 
person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The 
simple doctrine of the New Church concerning the 
W ord is this: The divine wisdom, which is the form 
and outshining of the divine love, is in itself above 
the heavens. To reach man's plane of life, it must be 
veiled and accommodated to his finite reception. 



336 



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of Great Price 



Revelation does not mean God disclosed in His 
naked divinity. It means God veiling Himself so 
that He may reach the plane of the finite mind. 

This veiling process is the story of the letter of 
the Word. The literal sense of the Scripture is there- 
fore like the veil that Moses put over his face when 
he talked to the people. The letter of the Word veils 
an inner splendor. The essential Word of God is 
back of the veil. Thus instead of the Word arising 
from human minds, it came down out of the un- 
searchable divinity and clothed itself with human 
language ; but within all the external corresponden- 
tial forms of its letter, there exists degrees of spirit- 
ual truth clothed and adapted to the reception of 
angelic and human minds, and above all these, the 
divine Word itself which is God. 

Such is the structure of the Scriptures. The Bible 
is therefore, inmostly considered, the Lord, veiled 
and accommodated to finite minds. He is not only 
the inmost of the Word, but its spiritual degree of 
truth — its spiritual senses, treat of Him. 

Here is the New Church's point of departure 
from the old concept of inspiration. The biographies 
of the patriarchs, in their spiritual sense, tell us the 
wonderful story of the- incarnation and glorification 
of the Lord. The prophetical portions of the Bible, 
inmostly considered, tell us the divine story of the 
coming of the Lord and of redemption and salva- 
tion. Christ is the burden of the whole message of 



Pearls of Great Price 337 

the Word, "And beginning with Moses, He ex- 
pounded unto them the things concerning Himself." 

THE NEED FOR AN INTERPRETER. 

When Philip joined the Eunuch, and found him 
reading the Word he asked him: "Understandest 
thou what thou readest?" The Word makes the 
church. The Catholic doctrine is that the church 
made the Word. This, of course, is false. The mere 
presence of the Word in the church, however, does 
not make the church, but the understanding of it 
does. The Lord gave the Word and He alone gives 
the true understanding of it. This is the symbolic 
meaning of the Lord riding on the white horse. The 
Lord has given, in the doctrines of the New Church, 
His own understanding of His own Word. It re- 
quired Philip to open to the Eunuch's mind the 
story of Christ in Isaiah's prophecy. And so of the 
whole Word. No man can understand the Word 
from the light of his own intelligence. So the Lord, 
by means of a man, whom He prepared for his 
mission, and whose mind He illumined, opened to 
all who love His appearing, the spiritual under- 
standing of His Word. Here lies another wonderful 
work for the church. The W T ord must be explained 
so that those who read it may find the Lord in it. 
This is above all the mission of the New Church. 
The Lord is in His Word. It testifies of Him. Show 
Him to men in His Word. Give them the spiritual 



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view-point. They need an interpreter. The Doc- 
trines of the church were given that the Word might 
be understood — that men might enter intellectually 
into the mysteries of faith. 

READING THE WORD. 

The Word is the bond of conjunction between the 
church in heaven and the church on earth. When 
it is reverently read, the angels instantaneously 
evolve its spiritual sense, and thereby consociate 
the reverent reader with themselves and open his 
mind to conjunction with the Lord. Then the 
heavens inflow and one comes into states of spiritual 
enlightenment and is empowered by the Lord: for 
He is the Word. 



XL 



PRAYING AND OBEYING GOD. 

St. Luke xi. 1-13; St. John xiv. 22-24: 
St. James 1. 22-27. 



The Lord was praying in a certain place, and 
when He had ceased His disciples asked Him to 
teach them to pray. Prayer is native to the human 
soul. No creature below^ man is capable of prayer, 
because no creature below man is capable of having 
awakened in itself the consciousness of God. This 
is a distinctly human endowment. But like every 
other religious instinct, the instinct of prayer must 
be guided by instruction. One must be taught how 
to pray. 

THE OBJECT OF PRAYER. 

God is Infinite. Man is finite. God is life. Man 
is a recipient of life. So there can be no commerce — 
no touch, between the Infinite, as such, and the 
finite soul. No one can approach unto the Infinite. 
There must be a Mediator between the Infinite and 
the finite. Before the coming of the Lord in the 
flesh, all approach to the Infinite was through the 
humanity of an angel whom the Lord infilled with 

339 



340 



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His life, to an extent that, for the time being, the 
angel's consciousness became quiescent, he being 
fully possessed by the divine. Thus we read of the 
"Angel of His Presence/' the "Angel of Jehovah/' 
and the "Angel of the Covenant." These were 
angels filled by the divine. And although they were 
angels, yet they called themselves God; for God 
spoke through them. This is the significance of the 
Angelophany of the Old Testament. Through an 
angelic humanity, thus possessed, the Lord kept 
Himself in communication with man and kept him 
in a human concept of God. But when man fell 
below the reach of the angels, making it impossible 
for the Lord to come to him through an angelic 
human form, He bowed the heavens and came 
down. He took man's nature upon Him. A real 
theophany was made. This was the incarnation — 
God in the flesh. "In the beginning was the Word, 
and the Word was with God, and the Word was 
God, and the Word was made flesh." This assumed 
humanity, this humanity, "conceived by the Holy 
Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary," was glorified 
and eternally united to the invisible divinity. In 
this glorified and Divine Humanity, the Infinite was 
humanized. Christ is thus the Divine Humanity of 
God — the visible God in whom is the invisible 
divinity, or the Father. He reveals God in His 
Divine Manhood and becomes the nexus — the 
Mediator, between the essential Divinity and finite 



Pearls of Great Price 341 

man. The Father is in Him, the Holy Spirit is from 
Him. "For in Jesus Christ dwelleth all the fulness 
of the Godhead bodily/' 

Jesus Christ in His Divine Humanity is therefore 
the object of Christian worship and the only one to 
whom we should look in prayer. And this is the first 
thing to learn if we would know how to pray. God 
in Christ — God in the Divine Manhood, is the God 
to whom Christians must pray. He said: "No one 
cometh unto the Father but by Me. " He said: "He 
that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." He said: 
"Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden and I will give you rest." Prayer must go 
up directly to Him "who is the brightness of the 
Father's glory and the express image of His Person." 

THE EFFECTS OF PRAYER. 

Prayer does not change God; for He is the un- 
changeable Love and Wisdom. Why, then, should 
we pray? Because prayer changes us. It brings us 
en rapport with God and the heavens and opens in 
our souls the channels through which the (Jivine life 
flows down to us. When we open the doors and 
windows of a room that the heat and light of the sun 
may come in, we do not create in the sun any greater 
disposition to shine. We simply let his heat and 
light in. So of prayer. It opens the doors and win- 
dows of the soul, and then the love of God, which is 
heat, and the wisdom of God, which is light, inflow. 



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Prayer, is then, the human soul turning to the 
Lord and receiving from Him what He is ever in the 
effort to bestow. And the answer to prayer! How 
does the Lord answer prayer? He answers our 
prayer when we seek to do the thing we pray for, 
when we seek to become what we pray to Him for 
strength to become. Understood in this way, prayer 
is a golden chain that binds us all to the feet of God. 

THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

The Lord's Prayer is the divine model of all 
prayer. There is not a need of the human soul that 
is not expressed in the petitions of that divine 
prayer. But while all that is true, yet it does not 
exclude other forms of prayer.. For "prayer is 
conversation with the Lord." He is a divine person 
— the divine Man; and we may open our hearts and 
talk to Him in prayer. What a wonderful and 
blessed thing it is! "0 thou that hearest prayer, to 
thee shall all flesh come." The very face of the one 
who keeps the channels of his soul open by prayer 
has something of the light of heaven in it. But all 
true prayer embodies the elements of the Lord's 
Prayer. It is the model. 

ASKING, SEEKING, KNOCKING. 

These three things indicate what is true of the 
whole man in prayer. Will, understanding and 
daily life make up the whole of man. He asks with 



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343 



his will, he seeks with his understanding and lie 
knocks with his life. Thus the whole man must 
pray, and when one prays in the Lord's name in 
this way, one receives what one prays for. No 
prayer that is genuine goes unanswered, for all 
genuine prayer involves the thought of the Lord's 
will, not one's own will. What a power the Lord's 
New Church would be in the world if we would stop 
talking about what prayer does not do and learn by 
experience what it does do! 

THE TWO MODES OF THE LORD'S MANIFESTATION. 

The Lord, considered in His supreme Divinity, is 
inaccessible alike to angels and to men. As the 
Infinite "He dwells in light whereunto neither angel 
or man can approach." To be known He must 
manifest Himself in a form accommodated to finite 
minds. That which manifests Him is the Word — 
the Word written and the Word incarnate. The 
letter of the written Word is the cloud-garment in 
which He comes to us that He may not blind us with 
His glory. The Incarnate Word — the Divine Hu- 
manity, is the human form glorified in which He 
stands out before us as the visible God in whom is 
the invisible. The Divine Humanity is then the 
supreme manifestation of God. a God was mani- 
fested in the flesh." But even so, the Lord in His 
Divine Humanity is manifested to His disciples in 
a way different from His manifestation to the 



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world. In entering the world through the gate of 
birth, He took upon Himself His whole creation; 
and in the glorification of His Humanity He came 
into His creation in absolute completeness and 
upholds all things "by the Word of His power." 
There is therefore a universal presence of the Lord 
in all worlds. He is imminent in His creation, but 
is personally discreted from it. Without this 
manifestation of the Lord the world and all that is 
in it would perish. The Lord as the creator and 
sustainer of all things is present with men in the 
world through all the forms of life they see. But 
this manifestation of the Lord to the world and to 
the worldly mind is an external manifestation. It is 
presence by means of thought, but it is not conjunc- 
tion with the Lord through love. Here lies the 
difference, "Thought brings presence; affection 
conjunction" 

Here we may see the difference between the 
Lord's manifestation to His disciples and His mani- 
festation to the world. His disciples are all who 
accept Him in His Incarnation and Divine Human- 
ity — who not only think of Him, but love Him. And 
this loving Him, in addition to the thought of Him, 
effects conjunction with Him; and in this conjunc- 
tion with the Lord there is realized an inward 
manifestation of Him in the soul. In this inward 
manifestation of the Lord to His faithful disciples, 
His life and spirit are made over to them to be His 



Pearls of Great Price 



345 



in them. The things of their self-life die and the 
qualities of the Divine Human life of the Lord live 
in them. St. Paul beautifully expressed this truth 
when he wrote: "I die daily." Again he says: "I am 
crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, 
but Christ liveth in me." The Lord's manifestation 
to His disciples is a manifestation in them by His 
spirit which they receive from Him. They are not 
manifested but Christ is made manifested by His 
life in them. This is one of the Apostolic doctrines 
that the New Church restores. This kind of mani- 
festation is not made to the world. It is something 
that belongs only to the Lord's disciples. 

THE BASIS OF THIS MANIFESTATION. 

In answer to the disciples' question: "How is it 
that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us and not unto 
the world?" The Lord said: "If a man love Me, 
he will keep My words." To keep the Lord's words 
is not only to hold them in one's thought but to love 
and do them. Obedience then to the Lord's words — 
obedience from very love of Him, is the ground of 
man's conjunction with the Lord and of the Lord's 
manifestation in his life. The Lord said: "If ye 
abide in Me and My words abide in you" — here 
then is the real test — abiding in the Lord and His 
words abiding in His disciple. It all means keeping 
His commandments. He said: "Ye are My friends 
if ye do whatsoever I command you." The Lord's 



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words must be kept — must be done. How did the 
Lord glorify His Humanity? He did it by keeping 
His Father's words. He freely chose the divine life: 
He freely laid clown Plis own life. He kept His 
Father's commandments. His Father was the 
Infinite love which dwelt in Him — so that by keep- 
ing His Father's Commandments — by living, not 
from the life of His heredity from Mary, but from 
the life of the Infinite love, He expelled from His 
Humanity all that was finite and formed in its 
stead the Divine Humanity. His glorification is the 
type of His disciples' regeneration. So by keeping 
the Lord's words, all that is carnal — all that is 
opposed to His life, is gradually put off. Christ is 
put on. The old man of the flesh dies, the new man 
of the spirit takes his place. This is the true concept 
of the doctrine of Substitution. St. Paul says: "If 
any man be in Christ, he is a new creature." The 
Lord lives in him, because he keeps — lives daily, the 
words of the Lord. Saving faith; what is it? It is 
believing the Lord's words and doing them. 
Nothing short of this can open the way for the 
inward manifestation of the Lord. This is what 
St. James means: "But be ye doers of the Word and 
not hearers only." Pteligion is doing. And the 
doing is the ground of the manifestation — the out- 
shining of the Lord in the disciples' life. 



Pearls of Great Price 



347 



THE FATHER AND THE SON DWELLING IN MAN 

Taking the old concept in regard to the Father 
and the Son it is difficult to see how they could come 
and make their abode with the disciple, but when we 
see that the Father is the Divine Love and the Son 
of the Divine Wisdom, the whole difficulty melts 
away. Man has two faculties of life called will and 
understanding. The Father dwells with him when 
he receives the Divine Love into His will, the Son 
dwells with him when he receives the Divine Wis- 
dom into his understanding. In this way do the 
Father and the Son come and make their abode with 
every faithful disciple. What a wonderful thing it is 
to have these divine guests abide with us! It is their 
presence in the mind that gives sacredness to life. 
And when they come to abide with us what peace 
they bring! How their presence glorifies life! Who 
would not have such divine guests dwell with him? 



XLI 

GROWING STRONGER AND HELPING 
OTHERS. 

St. Luke ii. 42-52; St. Peter i. 5-8; 
St. Luke x. 25-37; Gal. 1-10. 



THE LORD IN THE TEMPLE.. 

The Lord assumed human nature. "He took not 
upon Him the nature of an angel, but was born of 
the seed of Abraham according to the flesh." The 
difference between Jesus at His birth and that of an 
ordinary child was that His Humanity was con- 
ceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin 
Mary. He was the Son of God, born of a human 
mother. That which constitutes the inmost soul of 
a human child, and which is derived from an earthly 
father, and which is, in such a child, the highest 
spiritual receptacle of the divine life, was in the 
Christ child not a receptacle of life, but the very 
divine life itself. He was of virgin birth. His inmost 
soul was the Divine from eternity. In that degree of 
His being He was life. Thus St. John says: "In 
Him was life and the life was the light of men." The 
Father dwelt in Him, because He was immediately 
begotten of the divine life in its descent to the Virgin 

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Mary from within. Thus He said: "The Father 
that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works." Christ 
therefore did not have a human soul. His soul was 
Jehovah. But below this plane of the Infinite life in 
Him, He was human and finite. In coming into the 
world, Jehovah took upon Himself, a spiritual mind 
from the heavens, a natural mind from the inter- 
mediate world of spirits, a spiritual body from the 
substance of the spiritual world, and a limbus and 
natural body from the Virgin Mary. Thus He 
clothed His eternal Divinity with all finite and 
human degrees of life from the highest celestial to 
the very corporeal degree of the body. He assumed 
His whole creation. But all these degrees in the 
process of His glorification were opened one by one 
and made divine. This process went on gradually, 
yet He unfolded more rapidly than a mere finite 
child does, because His inmost life was the Divinity. 
He was not, at first, conscious of God's indwelling — 
of His Divine paternity. That was a growth from 
within. But all through His wonderful infancy and 
childhood that growth was going on. When He was 
twelve years of age, the opening into the divine 
consciousness was made. He realized that He was 
the only begotten Son of God. He knew that God, 
not Joseph, was His Father. Thus when Joseph 
and Mary found Him in the temple with the doc- 
tors, He said: "Wist ye not that I must be about 
my Father's business?" From that time on to the 



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completion of His glorification, He alternated be- 
tween states of human consciousness and divine 
consciousness, until in the end His Humanity being 
fully glorified, was eternally united to the Father, 
and His Divine Manhood made the medium of the 
transmission of the divine life to angels and to men. 
All that was finite from the heavens, the world of 
spirits and the Virgin Mary was displaced and 
replaced with what was divine from the Father. 
He put off the finite humanity and put on the 
Divine Humanity in which He became the visible 
God in whom is the invisible. But all this was a 
growth. 

THE CHRIST CHILD IN NAZARETH. 

Of His residence in Nazareth it is said: "And 
Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor 
with God and man." How wonderful these w r ords 
are! They tell us of the Lord's human growth. 
They describe a process which was going on in the 
internal degrees of the Lord's human nature. 
Although He was the Word, which in the beginning 
was with God and was God, yet this Word in Him 
was first far above His human consciousness. It 
descended and was made flesh in Him, as He, 
according to the laws of the divine order, progressed 
in wisdom, stature and grace. And this was done by 
means of the written Word which He studied as a 
child. As He read the Word, there flow T ed down into 



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His human mind from the Word in Him, a divine 
illumination and He saw that the whole Word 
treated of Him. He lived its divine ideals into His 
life and thus prepared His human mind for the 
reception of God. Thus we are told in the church 
writings that as to His Humanity, it was necessary 
for the Lord "to be educated and to be successively 
instructed in the sciences and by them be intro- 
duced into intelligence and wisdom. Wherefore as 
to His Human Principle He was an infant like an 
infant, a child like a child ... with this 
difference, that He perfected that progression more 
quickly, more perfectly, more fully than others." 
This wonderful process went on day by day during 
His life in the Nazareth home. He daily grew in 
grace and wisdom. Communication was opened 
with the Divine in Him. He lived from the Divine, 
and by so doing lived the Word into His Human 
life — made it flesh. This at first took place in the 
degrees assumed from the heavens. But the time 
came when the glorifying process reached His 
natural mind. Then He left Nazareth and, making 
Capernaum His own city, entered upon His public 
ministry. In a few brief years the work was done. 
His Divinity was humanized ; His Humanity was 
fully glorified. The Divine and the Human were 
united in Him. God had come down ; the Humanity 
was taken up. It was all a growth. In Him God 
was made man and man God. Two whole and 



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perfect natures, the Godhead and the Manhood 
became one in Him; and today enthroned in the 
heavens, he is Lord of Lords and King of Kings — 
the true God and eternal life. 

HELPING OTHERS. 
THE TWO GREAT COMMANDMENTS. 

The ten commandments are a summary of the 
entire Word of God; and the two great command- 
ments summarize and express the whole teaching of 
the ten commandments. Love to the Lord and love 
toward the neighbor include the whole of religion. 
This is our Lord's own teaching, for He said: "On 
these two commandments hang all the law and the 
prophets. " What a simplification of religion this is! 
The Lord is the creator of the human body, and He 
has ordained certain great laws that govern it. 
Those laws are organic in the very structure of the 
body, and not one of them can be violated without 
injury to the body. Its integrity and health depend 
upon obedience to them. If the question were 
asked ; "What shall I do that I may have a full and 
perfect physical life? The only sane answer would 
be: "Live according to the laws of bodily and 
physical life; eat proper food, clothe the body 
properly, do not expose it to too much heat or cold, 
take proper exercise, make it serve its proper use." 
Men, as a rule, have no difficulty in seeing this; but 
when they come to think of the soul they forget that 



Pearls of Great Price 353 



it is as truly an organism as the material body; that 
as such it is governed by spiritual laws that are 
organic in its very structure and that obedience to 
them is as essential to the integrity, health and life 
of the soul as obedience to physical laws is to the 
life of the outer body. St. Paul says: "There is a 
natural body and there is a spiritual body." Both 
have their laws. The two great commandments — 
love of the Lord and love of the neighbor, are the 
Jaws of the soul as a spiritual body. The physical 
body enters into the life of the outer world by 
obeying the laws of its own organism. The eye must 
be protected from injury that it may enter into the 
life of seeing; the ear must be kept in order that it 
may enter into the life of hearing, and so on with all 
the organs and faculties of the material body. The 
same is true of the soul and of the life that is proper 
to it. The great difficulty, however, arises from 
men's ignorance of the soul. What is spiritual seems 
vague to them, because they have fallen into 
material ways of thinking. The whole view-point 
has to be reversed. The spiritual body, or the soul, 
is the reality. "The soul is form and doth the body 
make." The soul is the real man; and the two 
great commandments are the laws of his life. Thus 
when the lawyer asked the Lord what he should do 
that he might inherit eternal life, Jesus said : „What 
is written in the law? How readest thou?" The 
lawyer replied: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 



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with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and with 
all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy 
neighbor as thyself/' The answer was correct; and 
the Lord said: "Thou has answered right; this do 
and thou shalt live/' 

Eternal life is something more than immortality. 
All human beings are immortal. The immortality 
of the soul is not conditioned on anything that a 
man may do or not do, but eternal life is. Eternal 
life is a quality, resulting from the union of the 
human soul with the Lord, through obedience to the 
law of the Lord as expressed in the two great com- 
mandments. One must love the Lord. This means 
that from affection, one must look to the Lord as the 
source of ail good, and by living from the acknowl- 
edgment of the Lord, open one's soul to Him and 
thereby be conjoined to Him, by shunning, as sin, 
all that is opposed to the law r s of the divine order. 
One must love one's neighbor — this does not mean 
the mere love of the person, but the love of the good 
that is in the person. There are many forms of the 
neighbor. The good in an individual; the good in 
one's country; the good in the church and the divine 
good in the Lord — all these ascending forms of good 
are the neighbor. And to love one's neighbor is to 
serve these forms of good. Can we not see how it is 
that one enters into and inherits eternal life, which 
is conjunction with the Lord, when in this wa} r one 
loves and serves the Lord and the neighbor? "This 



Pearls of Great Price 



355 



do and thou shalt live.' 7 This is religion. It may 
involve formal worship, creed and everything that 
goes along with the church idea; but these things 
are not of themselves religion. Religion includes 
them, but religion itself is doing the commandments 
from the inward acknowledgment of the Lord. "If 
thou wouldst enter into life, keep the command- 
ments." 

THE PARABLE OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 

The Lord in this parable lays the emphasis on ser- 
vice. The priest and the Levite let go by the oppor- 
tunity for service. They, although of the church, 
knew nothing of the love of God and the neighbor. 
The Samaritan, while not of the outward church, 
was, in his heart, principled in these two loves. He 
befriended the man who had fallen among the 
thieves. He served him. And when the Lord asked 
the lawyer which of the three was neighbor to the 
wounded man, he said: "He that showed mercy on 
him." Here was a concrete illustration. To act from 
the Lord's spirit of mercy toward those who need 
help is to be a neighbor. It is also to love the 
neighbor. Jesus said: "Go thou and do likewise." 
Real religion is something more than believing a set 
of doctrines, however true they may be. It is doing 
good from the Lord. It is being a good Samaritan. 
Religion is of the life. 



XLII 



WORKING IN THE CHURCH 
SPEAKING FOR CHRIST. 

Acts ii. 41-47; iv. 32-35; vi. 2-4; 
St. Luke xii. 8-12; Acts i. 1-8. 



The Christian Church had not at this time 
attained to an autonomous existence; and the 
followers of the Lord were still outwardly associated 
with the Jewish church. The Christian Church's 
real birthday was on Pentecost, when the Holy 
Spirit was given. The Christian Church, as a body 
of believers in the Incarnation and Divine Human- 
it}" of the Lord, dates from the outpouring of the 
Spirit . The Holy Spirit of the Glorified Lord Jesus 
created and became its informing life and caused it 
to become the representative of the Lord's pow r er in 
the world, and sent forth its missionaries to proclaim 
the Lord as the Redeemer and Saviour. There were 
but few to begin with, but they were devout and 
earnest, tarrying in Jerusalem, awaiting the promise 
of their Lord to endue them with power from on 
high. 

356 



Pearls of Great Price 



357 



THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH. 

There are very many interesting statements in 
the church writings about the constitution, doctrine 
and life of the Apostolic Church. Everything was 
simple, pure, but largely literal. The age of contro- 
versy had not dawned. The Lord was, to the early 
church, simply the Messiah who was promised in 
the old Testament. "We have found Him of whom 
Moses in the Law and the prophets did write/' 
This was the keynote of the church of the Apostles. 
And the early church knew that the one promised 
was none other than Jehovah. Jesus Christ was to 
the early church the Jehovah of the prophets veiled 
in man's flesh. This, the Apostolic Church most 
truly believed. Its creed is beautifully summarized 
by St. Paul in his Epistle to Timothy: a God was 
manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen 
of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in 
the world, and received up into glory." This truth 
of God in Manhood — the Saviourhood of God in 
Jesus Christ, was the supreme center around which 
the early church was built. It is true that no special 
theological definitions were attempted. They were 
not needed, for the Lord was to the church the 
supreme reality of its life. The early church had no 
theories or schemes of salvation. The Lord was all 
and in all. The church looked up to Him and drew 
its very breath of spiritual life from Him. To live 



358 



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as He taught, to love one another as He loved men. 
to exemplify His life in their own life — these were 
the things that characterized the lives of the mem- 
bers of the church of the Apostles. It is said: "And 
they continued steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine 
and fellowship, and in breaking of bread and in the 
prayers. " The Apostles' doctrine was the doctrine 
of the Godhead of Jesus Christ. That was the dis- 
tinguishing mark of the distinctly Apostolic age. 
And fellowship! What was it? "See how these 
Christians love one another" was a remark called 
forth by this fellowship. They were brethren in 
Christ — one body in Him. They were inspired by 
His spirit of love and service. The breaking of 
bread! This was the Lord's Supper which He in- 
stituted and commanded to be kept in remembrance 
of Him. It was a very simple service; yet it meant 
the Lord's presence with them and conjunction with 
Him. The falsities of the later-day theologians in 
regard to it were unknown. The bread was His 
body, the wine His blood; and these they under- 
stood spiritually to be the food of their souls. "And 
the prayers" — the Lord was to the early church the 
very person of God. It knew nothing of the doctrine 
of the tripersonality of God. God was in Christ. 
Christ was God. All prayer was addressed to God in 
Christ. He was the object of the early church's 
worship. Prayers were offered to Him in whom the 
Godhead dwelt. They were simple prayers, not 



Pearls of Great Price 



359 



formal ones. These things — steadfastness in the 
Apostles' doctrine, spiritual fellowship, breaking 
and eating the Consecrated bread, and prayer to 
the Lord — these things kept open the channel of 
life between the risen Lord and the soul of the 
church. They were what gave it power. 

The early church had its preachers too, but their 
sermons were not studied productions of the mere 
intellect. They were explanations of the Word. St. 
Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost gives us an 
idea of the preaching of the early church. Jesus and 
the resurrection — Jesus as the fulfilment of the 
prophecies, was the burden of the preaching. Those 
who gladly received the Lord's Word were baptized 
into His name and enrolled as Christians. Three 
thousand souls were gathered by one sermon. How 
far away from all this the church wandered after the 
age of theological disputation arose! The Apostle's 
doctrine was forgotten, fellowship was broken up, 
the breaking of bread was turned into a pagan 
ceremony and prayer to the Lord was succeeded by 
ritualistic mummery. 

THE NEW APOSTOLIC CHURCH. 

This sad state that came upon the church was 
pointed out by the Lord. He said: "The sun shall 
be darkened, the moon shall fail to give her light and 
the stars shall fall from heaven." The church after 
the fourth century rapidly became Christian in 



360 Pearls of Great Price 

name only. Scarcely a remnant of early Christianity 
remained in it. The judgment came upon and ended 
it, both in its Roman and Reformed branches. Then 
a New Church arose — the church symbolized by the 
Holy City of the Book of Revelation. This New 
Church is the Apostolic church restored, but more 
than restored; for the Lord has revealed to it the 
internal sense of the Word, together with the sys- 
tem of rational doctrine by which is met the deeper 
intellectual and spiritual needs of the present day. 
It is the New Apostolic Church. It takes up the 
Apostles 7 doctrine and unfolds it in all its fulness. 
It abides in the fellowship of Christ and of one 
another, but puts new qualities into it. It breaks 
the bread, but at the same time makes the Lord's 
Supper the symbol of His good and truth and the 
channel of their inflow to human souls. It prays, 
but its prayers are intelligent openings of the soul to 
the Lord. Yes, the New Church is Apostolic; but 
the form of its life is more complex than that of the 
early church. It has, however, the same mission. 

CONFESSION OF THE LORD. 

That the Lord may be confessed, He must first be 
known. No one can confess a truth of which he is 
ignorant. This is an important teaching. The pur- 
pose of revelation is to acquaint man with a class of 
truth wholly undiscoverable by his unaided human 
faculties. God is the only way to Himself; and He 



Pearls of Great Price 



361 



reveals Himself to man, not by drawing man up to 
the plane of the Infinite, a thing impossible; but by 
letting Himself down to man's plane of apprehen- 
sion and reception. "The world by wisdom knew 
not God." The Bible, in its letter, is the Lord's 
accommodation of the divine truth to man's plane 
of life. It is the Lord veiled and brought down to 
where we are. We are unable to go up and find 
God, but He can come down and find us. The Word 
of God is therefore the source of all divine and 
spiritual wisdom. The Lord is in His Word; and in 
the Word, He may be found. "Search the Scrip- 
tures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and 
they are they which testify of me." But the Word 
cannot be understood without doctrine. And the 
doctrine by which a true and spiritual understand- 
ing of the Word is made possible, is a living and 
divine thing. It is not some humanly constructed 
theory — some formulation by the human intellect. 
It is a revelation. It is God's own definition of Him- 
self as He exists in the Word. The vision of St. 
John in which He saw the Lord riding on a white 
horse in its inner meaning, is the story of the revela- 
tion of the church writings of the Lord's own under- 
standing of His Word. The confession of the Lord 
by the man of the New Church is therefore very 
different from a mere life confession. It is a confes- 
sion of His supreme Godhead as revealed in the 
internal sense of the Scriptures and rationally set 



362 



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forth in a revealed doctrine. In the light of revealed 
doctrine one is enabled to understand the Scrip- 
tures, and by understanding them, see the Lord in 
them. This is the all important point. The confes- 
sion of the Lord in the early Christian Church meant 
loyalty to Him as the one who came in fulfilment of 
the Messianic prophecies. It meant confessing Him 
as "the Messiah. This was done by the Apostles and 
the early church. But discipleship in the Lord's 
New Church means a confession of the Lord, not 
only as the Messiah, but confession of Him as the 
only God — confession of the Divine Humanity. It 
is more interior and rests upon rational conviction 
formed by the doctrine that opens the Word and 
reveals Him personalty in it. It is confession of Him 
in His Second Coming. But this confession of the 
Lord means more than a mere confession of Him 
by the understanding. It is a confession of Him in 
the life — a confession before men. No truth is really 
confession until it is lived. A mere intellectual con- 
fession of the Divine Humanity is of little avail. Of 
course, the intellect must confess the truth of God 
in Christ, but if the confession is not made before 
men, that is, if the life does not confess Him by 
exhibiting His spirit, no real change is made in the 
quality of life, nor is the truth of the Divine 
Humanity really confirmed in the soul. When 
Jesus said: " Whosoever shall confess me before 
men, him shall the son of man also confess before 



Pearls of Great Price 



363 



the angels of God/' He was teaching the great 
truth, that when we confess the truth of the 
Divinity of the Lord's Humanity in daily life, that 
truth — the truth that He is God in touch with man, 
will be confirmed and fixed in the internal mind — 
confirmed there by all the holy truths of the Word. 
This is what is meant by the Son of Man confessing 
us before the angels of God. 

THE SIN AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST. 

The Lord distinguishes between sin against the 
Son of Man and sin against the Holy Ghost. The 
Son of Man is the Lord as to divine truth — the 
divine truth expressed in the letter of the Bible. 
The Holy Spirit is the interior and spiritual truth 
of the Word — the truth of the internal sense of the 
Scriptures. To speak a word against the Son of Man 
is to falsely interpret the letter of the Word. The 
literal sense of the Bible, while it contains genuine 
truth, contains many appearances of truth — such 
as divine anger, vengeance, jealousy and revenge. 
These are appearances; and these appearances of 
truth work no harm to the simple good. True, they 
are not genuine; but they do not hurt the simple; 
for when they come into the other life, not having 
used them to confirm evil, they can easily be led to 
the genuine truths of the Word. 

But to sin against the Holy Spirit is to see, ac- 
knowledge and enter the life of the internal truth of 



364 



Pearls of Great Price 



the Word, and then to recede from it and live the 
opposite life of evil. In such a case one commits 
profanation. Good and evil are mixed in such a one. 
This is the most dreadful of all sins. It cannot be 
forgiven, not because the Lord ceases to love such a 
one, but because the interiors of the mind are de- 
stroyed. This sin is possible only to one who knows 
the interior truths of the Word. We are told that 
the Lord seeks to prevent this profanation in every 
conceivable way. We are told that it is a law of the 
Divine Providence that one should be admitted into 
the truths of faith and the goods of charity only so 
far as one may be kept in them to the end of one's 
life. But the fact that there are profaners in the 
other life shows us that this law may be violated. 
Those of us who are always w r ondering why the 
church does not grow faster might find a reason for 
its slow growth in this law of the Divine Providence. 
To see the internal sense of the Word brings us 
under the profoundest obligations and adds tre- 
mendously to the responsibility of living. And we 
need to watch daily lest we sin against the inner 
light and life of the Lord's Word. 



XLIII 

CHRISTIAN GIVING— CONQUERING EVIL" 

St. Luke vi. 30-38; xxi. 1-4; 
Ephesians v. 6-21. 



We may all see that the command to give to every 
man who asks of us cannot, in reason, he literally 
obeyed ; for while it is a Christian duty to stand in 
an affirmative attitude toward those of our fellow- 
men who need help in material ways, and to be ever 
ready to lend the helping hand to them; yet the 
burden of the lesson is the clear pointing out to us 
of the duty of spiritual helpfulness to all who seek 
such help. "Give to every man that asketh of thee/ 1 
Man is essentially a spiritual being, and his deepest 
needs are spiritual. This is why we are told that the 
Divine Providence regards, as an end, the spiritual 
life of man. The external things and possessions of 
the merely outward natural life of man have no 
significance as mere things and possessions. They 
are given or withheld by the Lord solely out of 
regard to the spiritual life. The Lord's end in all 
the outward happenings of life is man's eternal life. 
He is seeking to make an angel and He uses the 
means best adapted to that end. So that the com- 

365 



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Pearls of Great Price 



mand to give to every man that asks of us can be 
truly obeyed only in a spiritual way. 

That one may come into a spiritual life, he must 
be given the truth about that life. Thus the Lord 
reveals in the Word the law and doctrine of the 
spiritual life, and He institutes His church on earth 
by a divine revelation, and makes it the custodian 
of the truth. The church should be the teacher of 
spiritual truth. This is the distinct mission of the 
Lord's New Church. He has opened the Word to it 
in its spiritual sense; He has revealed in its doctrines 
the truths that men must know in order to live the 
spiritual life. And He has sent the church forth into 
the world to be a teaching church. And the church 
must be ready to impart, both good and truth to all 
who are in the affection of truth. Those who ask — 
really ask of the church, are those who have in them 
the affection of learning the truth for the sake of 
life. They are the remnant from whom the church 
is to be built in the world. They are in simple good, 
but they need to know the truth. More and more 
are they asking of the church. 

What an obligation is thus laid on the church! 
She must give to every one that asks. This is an 
obligation that rests, not on the ministry alone, but 
upon every member of the church. The laymen of 
the church need to have this truth deeply impressed 
upon them. They should study the doctrines of the 
church — have a clear understanding of them, and 



Pearls of Great Price 



367 



also cultivate in themselves the ability of imparting 
the beautiful and rational truths of the church to all 
who ask for them. There is no excuse for being igno- 
rant of the teaching of the church. We should all be 
able to give the truth to those whose affection for it 
leads them to ask for it. 

And this giving must be done in the Lord's spirit. 
"And of him that taketh away tlry goods ask them 
not again. " All good is from the Lord. And when 
those who seek the church for the good of life it is 
able to lead to, the church must not act in a selfish 
spirit, expecting that good to be attributed to it. It 
must freely give; for in giving freely of its good, the 
good given goes into the life of those who receive it, 
to be acknowledged by them as from the Lord. And 
yet it is true that the church realizes increase of good 
and multiplication of truth as it freely gives to 
others. Every truth the church imparts remains 
with the church and is multiplied in its mind. Every 
good that is taken from it and embodied in human 
lives, stays with the church, and is greatly in- 
creased. This is a law. "Give and it shall be given 
unto you; good measure, pressed down and shaken 
together, and running over." The only way the 
church really lives — the only way the man of the 
church really lives, is by giving. Influx is according 
to efflux. 

THE WIDOW'S MITES. 
A widow, spiritual!}^ understood, is one who is in 



368 Pearls of Great Price 



good, but not instructed in the truth. The rich, 
spiritually understood, are those who are in abund- 
ance of truth, but not in good. The rich casting 
their gifts into the treasury is the picture of a wor- 
ship from truth alone. This kind of worship is not 
acceptable unto the Lord. It is of the mere intellect. 
The heart does not enter into it . The widow casting 
in here tw T o mites, is the picture of a worship of the 
Lord from charity in the heart. While genuine wor- 
ship is of truth and good united, yet if one is not in 
genuine truth, but in simple good, and from that 
simple good, worships the Lord, the worship is 
accepted, because it is from good. And what is 
more — the widows — all who are in simple good, are 
capable of being instructed in the truth when they 
come into the other life and of being led to heaven, 
whereas, the rich — those who are in truth alone, 
whose worship is a mere outward routine, when 
the} 7 come into the other life, are deprived of their 
spiritual riches. Thus the Lord said: "Unto him 
that hath shall more be given and he shall have 
abundantly, but from him that hath not shall be 
taken away that which he hath." All true spiritual 
giving is from the heart. This is the lesson, and it is 
one we all need to learn. The outside of life is drop- 
ped during the judgment process in the world of 
spirits. Only what is of the internal man remains. 
And the internal man is ultimately clothed with an 
external that perfectly corresponds. The widow's 



Pearls of Great Price 



369 



two mites are more to the Lord than all the riches of 
truth without that charity that does good from the 
acknowledgment of the Lord. 



St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians describes 
in the most graphic way the conflict which takes 
place in the regenerating man between the flesh and 
the spirit, and exhorts the Christian disciples to 
equip themselves so that they may be able to meet 
and overcome the opposing forces of evil. 

THE TWO MINDS IN MAN. 

The Christian doctrine is that w T e are possessed of 
two minds, one of which is spiritual and the other 
natural. Or to state it differently, we all have a 
natural man and a spiritual. The natural man is 
formed of the things of this world. His native life is 
the love of self and the world. He is evil from nativ- 
ity. The spiritual man is from above. He needs no 
regeneration. He is formed of the good and true 
things of heaven. His life is the love of the Lord and 
the neighbor. The natural man is a miniature hell; 
the spiritual man, a miniature heaven. When the 
rational plane of the mind is opened and man comes 
face to face with life and its responsibilities, he must 
make a choice as to what he shall become. He 
stands, as it were, between the two men in him, and 
decides which shall govern and reign. If he elects to 
become a spiritual man, there instantly arises a 



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conflict between his higher and his lower self. The 
natural man in him opposes the life of the spiritual, 
and he enters, of necessity, upon the Christian war- 
fare. The flesh fights against the dominance of the 
spiritual life. This warfare we feel as temptation. 
It is all necessary to our regeneration; for only as 
the natural man in us is subdued — regenerated and 
brought under obedience to the spiritual man, can 
we experience the spiritual life and its joys. St. 
Paul points all this out to us. He says: "For we 
wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against 
principalities, against powers, against the rulers of 
the darkness of this world, against spiritual wicked- 
ness in high places." How true this is! Salvation is 
not by faith alone — it is a thing that has to be 
worked out; and in working it out, day by day, with 
fear and trembling before God, "who worketh in 
us," we must meet, combat, and, in the Lord's 
name, overcome the evils of the natural man. It 
may be a long warfare. It is long for many of us. 
But victory is sure to come to all who look to the 
Lord. 

THE WHOLE ARMOUR OF GOD. 

The Christian disciple is not called upon to meet 
and fight against evil in his own strength. The key- 
note of the Gospel is the truth that the Lord has 
conquered the hells. He, in His Humanity, admit- 
ted to Himself and completely subjugated all the 



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forces of evil; and now, He holds the hells in utter 
subjection to Himself. But in our regeneration, it is 
necessary that the evils inhering in our natural man 
be aroused that we may be made conscious of them, 
see and fight against them, and in the Lord's name 
subdue them. 

Thus the Lord permits evil spirits to flow into our 
evils; and when they flow into and make them 
active, the Lord, by means of the good and truth of 
our spiritual man, fights against them through the 
angels who encamp round about us. It is a real 
battle; and the conflicting spheres of the angels and 
the evil spirits, we feel as temptation. During this 
conflict, we are held in a state of freedom, so that we 
are able to fight as of ourselves; for on us the whole 
matter depends. Hence we are exhorted to put on 
the whole armour of God, that we may be able to 
stand against the wiles of the devil. 

What this whole armour of God is the Apostle 
points out to us in symbolic language. The loins 
must be girt about with the truth ; we must have on 
the breast plate of righteousness, and our feet must 
be shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace. 
We must have the shield of faith, the helmet of sal- 
vation and the sword of the spirit. The armour of 
the Roman soldier furnished all this symbolism to 
the Apostle; and each part of the soldier's armour 
stands for a corresponding«part of the armour of the 
Christian. The loins stand for the spiritual love of 



372 Pearls of Great Price 



the Christian, and this love must be girl with the 
divine truth. The breast, which contains the heart 
and lungs, stands for the will and the understanding 
of the Christian and the breast plate for the right- 
ness of his life in all its relations. The feet stand for 
the daity life of the Christian, and the shodding of 
them with the Gospel of peace, for the ultimation in 
life of the religion of Christ. The shield by which 
the Roman soldier quenched the darts of his enemy, 
is the faith of the Christian — the faith which knows 
that no dart of falsity can prevail over the one who 
is protected by the Lord in His Divine Humanity. 
The helmet of the soldier, the head cover — stands 
for salvation — the helmet of salvation. And the 
helmet of salvation is the truth of the Saviourhood 
of God in Jesus Christ. And the sword of the soldier 
— stands for the Word of God which the Christian 
may wield as the soldier his sw T ord. This is the 
armour we must put on. And then using it, we shall 
be more than conquerors. 



XLIV 

WINNING THE WORLD FOR CHRIST, 
FRUITS OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE, 
AND WHAT IT MEANS TO BE 
A CHRISTIAN. 

Matt, v. 13-16; xxviii. 18-20; xxx. 14-30; x. 1-12; 
I John in. 1-24. 



THE DIVINE COMMISSION. 

"Go ye therefore and teach all nations. " These 
are the words with which the Lord sent forth His 
disciples into the world. This constituted their com- 
mission. The Lord had risen from the dead. He 
w T as alive forevermore. He came forth having all 
power. He was able to send forth the disciples in 
His own name. He said to them: "All power is 
given unto me in heaven and in earth." Their com- 
mission to go forth and teach all nations must be 
connected with this great announcement. If Christ 
were a mere hero — a mere man, however highly 
endowed He might be, His commission to His dis- 
ciples w r ould have been only a human commission. 
But His announcement: "All power is given unto 
me in heaven and in earth," lifts their commission to 

373 



374 Pearls of Great Price 



a higher level, and makes it the greatest commission 
ever given to men. For to claim all power in heaven 
and earth is to claim supreme Divinity, It was 
equivalent to saying: "I am the God of heaven and 
earth/' And this is the distinct claim the Lord 
makes. His Humanity, glorified, has all power. 
Think of this! If one says that Christ is the second 
person in the Godhead, coexistent and coequal with 
God the Father, how then could He say that this 
power was given unto Him? On the basis of the 
doctrine of the ''Eternal Generation of the Son" — 
of a Son of God from Eternity, who as such was 
from eternity omnipotent, possessing all the attri- 
butes possessed by the first person in the Godhead, 
how could there be given any power umta Him? 
And on the basis of the HumanitariaisMEC^igifetkal 
Christ is the natural son of Joseph and^Mip.yfqibhiis 
a mere man, although exalted in goodness' and 
wisdom above ordinary men, how could such a 
being receive and function all power in heaven and 
earth? Both theories fall to the ground when 
examined in the light of Holy Scripture and reason. 
How thankful we should be for the blessed doctrines 
of the Lord's New Church! For they clear away all 
difficulties and reveal the Lord to us in His real 
person and character. 

Jehovah, who is from eternity, assumed human 
nature in the world. This human nature He glori- 
fied and united to Himself by eliminating from it all 



Pearls of Great Price 



375 



that was finite and replacing the eliminated finite 
qualities with what was Divine. This process re- 
sulted in the formation of the Divine Humanity. 
And this Divine Humanity received into itself and 
functioned the power of the invisible Divinity. Thus 
Jesus said, in speaking of the Father: U AH mine are 
thine and thine mine." Jesus was Jehovah on man's 
plane. All power was thus given unto the Divine 
Humanity. All the power of the invisible God was 
in and functioned by the visible Divine Humanity 
as all the power of the human soul is in and func- 
tioned by the body. Jesus is thus God over all 
blessed forevermore. 

This is the distinctive Christian concept of God. 
He is omnipotent in His Humanity. It is this doc- 
trine that makes the church Christian. We are so 
used to hearing the words "Divine Humanity" that 
we sometimes fail to grasp their significance. The 
Divine Humanity does not stand for the Divinity of 
man, but for the Humanity of God. And it is only 
God's Humanity that we are able to see and ap- 
proach. The attempt to worship the Divine in 
Jesus is an attempt to worship an invisible God. 
Christian worship consists in a direct approach to 
the Divine Humanity — our Saviour Jesus Christ. 
Thus the commission of the disciples came from 
Him who had all power because He was and is the 
only wise God and Saviour. It was a divine commis- 
sion from the one only Divine Lord. 



376 



Pearls of Great Price 



When amid the scenes of another world these 
same disciples were called together and sent forth to 
preach the Gospel anew, the old original commission 
still held, only it was more clearly understood in the 
light of the Lord's Second Coming; for as they went 
forth in the spiritual world they preached the great 
truth "that the Lord God the Saviour Jesus Christ 
r eigne th." 

TEACHING ALL NATIONS. 
The commission given by the Lord to His dis- 
ciples involved the teaching of the nations. We are 
not born into knowledge. We must be taught. And 
the church must be the teacher of spiritual truth. 
This was its commission. Time came, however, 
when the church departed from the truth and 
taught false doctrine. Then its end came. But a 
New Church was raised up in its stead, and the 
original Apostolic commission passed over to it, and 
it was sent forth to teach all nations. Let us never 
forget that the distinct teaching that Jesus Christ 
is God is the supreme business of the Lord's New 
Church. Where the doctrines of the church are 
clearly and distinctly taught from and confirmed by 
the Word there is growth. There is no question 
about this. The New Church is a teaching church. 
It must go forth teaching the nations. 

BAPTISM INTO THE NAME OF THE FATHER AND 
THE SON AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

The Sacrament of Baptism is the gate of entrance 



Pearls of Great Price 



377 



into the church. It has three distinct uses — (1) in- 
troduction into the Christian Church in both worlds ; 
(2) that the Christian may know and acknowledge 
the Lord and follow Him, and (3) that man may be 
regenerated. Baptism, however, confers neither 
faith nor salvation, but is a sign that a man is of the 
church and that he may be regenerated. Baptism 
into the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit 
means regeneration by the divine love, wisdom and 
power of the Lord; and these three essentials of the 
Godhead are in and revealed by the Lord Jesus 
Christ; for in Him dwells all the fulness of the God- 
head bodily. The Apostles baptized in the name of 
Jesus Christ. St. Peter said: "Repent and be ye 
baptized in the name of Jesus Christ/' Jesus Christ 
is really the name of the Father, Son and Holy 
Spirit. He is God manifested in the flesh. Baptism 
is then the outward and visible sign of the inward 
grace of regeneration. By it w T e are known as 
Christians in both worlds — but what it stands for 
must be realized in personal regeneration. 

The Christian life is the life of Christ lived 
through the process of regeneration, over again, in 
the life of the disciple. It is Christ living in us. It- 
is therefore more than a mere profession. The life 
into which one comes by birth from natural parents 
is a natural life; and the essence of the natural life 
is the love of self and the world. Out of this natural 
life one must be regenerated if one becomes a real 



378 



Pearls of Great Price 



Christian; for no refinement of the natural life can 
develop it into a spiritual life. "Except a man be 
born from above he cannot enter ino the kingdom of 
God." The essence of the Christian life is love to 
the Lord and the neighbor; and this love is from the 
Lord and is possessed only by those who deny self 
and by a real inward regeneration come into the 
quality of spiritual life. 

THE TEN BLESSINGS. 

The Beatitudes point out to us the means by 
which the fruits of the Christian life are realized in 
our own lives. The Lord goes up to the mountain to 
deliver these blessings, because a mountain, in its 
highest signification, stands for the divine love; and 
the Beatitudes originate in the divine love and pro- 
ceed from it. Let us briefly consider each beatitude. 
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for their's is the 
kingdom of heaven. " Poverty of spirit! Here is 
where we must begin. Man of himself is possessed 
neither of goodness or truth. He is empty of good 
and void of truth in himself. The Lord alone is 
good. The Lord alone is truth. And when one real- 
izes this and turns to the divine source of goodness 
and truth that he may receive them from the Lord, 
then is one blessed. And the fruit of this state is the 
kingdom of heaven in one's life; for in heaven the 
angels acknowledge that it is the divine of the Lord 
that makes heaven in and around them. "Blessed 



Pearls of Great Price 



379 



are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted." 
They who mourn, spiritually, are they who, real- 
izing their need of good, grieve in heart and long for 
it. Those who mourn in this sense always find 
comfort in the impartation to them of that which 
they lack. If they mourn they shall be comforted; 
for the mourning is their sense of need and the 
supply of their need by the Lord is the great blessing 
that comes and is manifested in their life. 

"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the 
earth." The meek denote all who are in charity, 
especially as to their internal man, the charity that 
shuns evils as sin and does good because it is of God. 
All who are meek in this sense inherit the earth, 
which means that their external man is imbued with 
mildness, forbearance — with all those qualities of 
heaven that make life sweet and tender. They in- 
herit the earth — the earthly plane of their minds. 
It is brought into correspondence with the heaven 
of their internal mind and is their's and under their 
control. This control of the earthly mind is the 
blessing that comes and is manifested as a fruit of 
Christian life. "Blessed are they which do hunger 
and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be 
filled." The will and the understanding of the 
spiritual man are created forms for the reception of 
love and wisdom from the Lord. And the will 
hungers when it desires good, and the understanding- 
thirsts when it desires truth. And where there is 



380 



Pearls of Great Price 



conscious need there is always given that which 
supplies the need. How blessed it is to feel this 
need! For all who feel it shall be filled. Good and 
truth inflow to satisfy the hunger and thirst of the 
soul. This is the blessing that comes; and the whole 
life reveals the good that feeds the heart and the 
truth that satisfies the mind. "Blessed are the 
merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." To be merci- 
ful to others — to know that if the Lord, out of pure 
mercy, did not hold us by His hand, we would of 
ourselves cast ourselves into hell; to know this, and 
from this sense of the Divine mercy toward us 
exercise, in our finite way, mercy toward others, not 
condemning them, but regarding them from mere}-; 
to be merciful in this way, is blessed, for it opens our 
hearts to a sense of the Lord's great mercy and 
brings us to a realization of it in our own lives. We 
all need the Lord's mercy. And w^e shall find it by 
being merciful. And- the merciful life is the fruit of 
it. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see 
God." To be pure in heart is to have one's will 
purified from the defilements of evil. And as one 
comes into this state, the blessings one receives is 
the clear vision of God — the clear understanding of 
the truth. A life clearly seeing and revealing the 
truth is the blessing of the pure heart — a fruit of the 
spirit. "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall 
be called the children of God." Love is the great 
pacificator. Those who love the Lord and the 



Pearls of Great Price 



381 



neighbor send forth from them an atmosphere which 
tends to make peace. Where there is love, peace 
abides. It is always the true peacemaker. How 
blessed it is ! How could they who carry around in 
their hearts, and radiate in their lives, this peace- 
making quality be anything else but children of 
God! For the Lord is essential peace, and He is in 
the endeavor to give peace to all. " Blessed are they 
that are persecuted for righteousness sake, for 
t heir's is the kingdom of heaven." Spiritual life is 
attained only through temptation. The evil spirits, 
by means of evils and falsities, assault the goods 
and truths of the spiritual life. They hate the Lord 
and despise everything that is from Him in man. 
So we are persecuted for righteousness sake. But 
it is all blessed in its results; for as an outcome, the 
kingdom of God is formed in all who thus endure to 
the end. It can be formed in man in no other way. 
"Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and 
persecute you, and say all manner of evil against 
you, falsely, for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding 
glad; for great is your reward in heaven." To be 
reviled is to feel the opposition evil spirits and men 
make to the good that inflows from the Lord, and to 
be persecuted is to feel the opposition they make 
against the truth in the understanding and have 
them say all manner of evil, falsely, is to feel hell's 
opposing power to good in one's life. Goodness, 
truth and the life, are assaulted in every one who is 



382 



Pearls of Great Price 



being regenerated. This is why the Lord says such 
reviled, persecuted and slandered ones should be 
glad and rejoice; for by all these things they may 
know that they have entered the regenerate life. 
But if these sufferings are patiently borne, great 
shall be the reward in heaven. Such is the Christian 
life and the fruits of the spirit. 

The third chapter of the first Epistle of St. John 
contains the Apostolic doctrine of the Christian life. 
What a beautiful life it is that he sets before us! 
Those who think of the old theory of salvation by 
faith alone find no support for it in this wonderful 
chapter. When one reads these early Apostolic 
conceptions of the Christian life one sees how far 
the modern church has drifted away from the 
teaching of the early Christian Church. Of course, 
we all know that the outward conditions of life have 
undergone great changes since the days of St. John, 
but the essence of what constitutes the Christian 
life is the same. It has not changed. The coming of 
t he New Dispensation of the Christian Church, while 
it brings with it a rational doctrine of the Christian 
religion and an explanation of the Christian symbols 
adapted to the deeper intellectual needs of our age, 
yet the very first thing that the New Age doctrines 
do for the church is to put it back on its original 
foundation and thus re-establish the spiritual life of 
the early church. The outward form of the life is 
indeed different, but the essence of it is the same, 



Pearls of Great Price 



383 



RELIGION A THING OF LIFE. 

The keynote of the Christian life is love. This 
was the Apostolic concept, and the New Apostolic 
church makes love, or charity, the essential of 
Christian life. In the New Church we have the very 
essence of charity defined, but when it is defined 
we have still charity as the essential thing. 
The doctrines of the church are only state- 
ments of what charity is. "The first thing of 
charity is to shun evils because they are of the devil 
and from the devil/' Think of this! Real good can- 
not be done until evil is first shunned because it is 
sin against God ; for charity is of the life. No scheme 
of salvation can bring one into a state of good that 
makes faith the first thing of religion and thus the 
saving factor. The office of the truth is to bring to 
one the real state of one's unregenerate heart. The 
woman who met our Lord at the well was convinced 
of His Messiahship because He told her "all she ever 
did." Truth is the light that reveals evil. This, of 
course, must take place before evil can be shunned; 
but if one stops with having one's evils revealed — if 
one does not begin to shun them as sins, one does 
not by simple seeing them, enter upon the Christian 
life. They must be shunned as sins, shunned be- 
cause they are of hell and from hell. This is the first 
thing of charity. Until one does this one cannot take 
the next step. "The second thing of charity is -to do 



384 Pearls of Great Price 



good because it is of God and from God." The good 
of charity is not from men, but from the Lord. And 
this good inflows and is manifested in one's life as 
one prepares the way for it by shunning, as sins, in 
all the relations of one's life, the evils forbidden in 
the Ten Commandments. As one does this daily, one 
comes into the Christian life. Again, 'Tn shunning 
evil and in doing good one must act as of oneself, 
but at the same time one must acknowledge that 
the will, the understanding and the power to do so 
are of the Lord alone." These things constitute the 
Christian life. Whoever lives in this way is a Chris- 
tian. He is born of God and is a Son of God. 

FOLLOWING THE LORD. 

"And this is His commandment, that we should 
believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and 
love one another as He gave us commandment." 
This means that to come into genuine Christian life, 
one must know that that life dwells in those who 
accept and acknowledge, in their hearts, the incar- 
nation of God in Jesus Christ — believing on the Son 
as the Divine Humanity of God — the Name that 
reveals Him in the terms of man's life. This believ- 
ing on the name of the Son, Jesus Christ — don't we 
all see that it means that one must come directly to 
God in His Humanity, which is His Son? How 
otherwise can one come to God? And coming 
directly to Him in whom the Father dwells, one 



Pearls of Great Price 



385 



must follow Him by keeping His commandments — 
doing as the Lord commanded. He gave us com- 
mandments, and they must be kept. "This is my 
commandment that ye love one another as I have 
loved you.' 7 This is a thing of life — of following Him 
who said: "If any man will be my disciple, let him 
deny himself, take up His cross and follow me." 
We follow Him when we live, in our finite way, as 
he lived in His divine way. He glorified and made 
Divine His Humanity, because, inmostly He was 
the Word. By following Him, we are regenerated 
and made spiritual and celestial. He lived the 
divine Word into His Humanity; we must live His 
commandments into our lives. It is all a following 
of Him. "And he that keepeth His commandments 
dwelleth in Him, and He in him." Here is the 
thought of mutual and reciprocal conjunction. 
"And hereby we know that He abideth in us by the 
spirit He hath given us." How this simple Apostolic 
teaching concerning the Christian life, as the life of 
charity — of following the Lord, brushes away for- 
ever the Roman doctrine of a sacramental salvation ; 
How it exposes the doctrine of Protestantism that 
the Christian life is by faith alone! "My little 
children," says the aged Apostle, "let us not love in 
word, neither in tongue, but in deed and truth." 
How genuine this is! Now, all that the Lord has 
revealed in His New Coming, and how wonderful 
are the things He has revealed, is that His New 



386 Pearls of Great Price 



Church may come into this lovely life of brotherly 
love. I know the New Apostolic Church moves on 
a higher plane than was possible to the early church, 
but it stands for the same things, understood in a 
deeper sense. May the divine Head of the church 
lead us to see our true mission as the successor of the 
Apostolic church and guide us in the direction of a 
ministry that will call men to repentance, conver- 
sion and salvation. When this awful world-war is 
ended, men and women will turn to us not for 
stones, but for the bread of life. They will ask for 
religion, not as a mere philosophy of doctrine, but 
as a vital thing of life. 



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